Their Own Devices
by J.A. Carlton
Summary: When left to their own devices... Sam and Dean... Wee Chesters... still manage to find trouble....
1. Chapter 1

Their Own Devices - S.N. ficlet

by: sifi

disclaimer: I hate repeating myself…

love: In this case I don't mind so much.

--

"Come in and sit down Mr. Stuart…" Principal Drafke ushered Dean into his office then closed the door and instead of sitting behind his desk actually sat in a chair off to the side.

Dean looked around and settled himself stiffly in the chair, his green eyes hard and penetrating the deep brown one in front of him, he'd met the principal a couple weeks ago and got a good feeling from him. He seemed like he was the kind of man who genuinely liked kids.

"Mrs. Baxter told me what you told her… would you mind telling me precisely what you saw? Just so I can make sure there was no misunderstanding…" he invited.

Dean felt his lips curl into a sneer as he rose to his feet, his heart pounding in his 12 year old chest in much the same way he wanted to pound his fist into something. He took a breath and let it out hard and fast, "Sandy's dad called her over while we were playing kickball…"

"Sandy Harris right?" Principal Drafke asked.

"That's right… I guess he was bringing her lunch cause when I went over to her she had a lunch on the ground with her… but she went around to the drivers side and Teddy kicked the ball right into my face… I was at 3rd base but I caught it and he was out then it was our up… so I didn't really see everything…" he was trying to keep events straight, trying to give the principal a clear picture but it wasn't coming out quite right. He could tell by the look on the older man's face.

"Hold on a second…" the principal suggested and stepped out of the office, giving Dean a chance to take a deep breath and punch his hand a few times with his itching fist.

He forced himself to sit back down. Barely at the edge of the seat he sat perfectly straight, his hands clutching his knees, his eyes closed and his slender chest trembling as he forced himself to breathe deeper, to be still enough to relay the moment clearly.

_I hope she stays there…yeah, there's no reason she'd leave, I did promise her… I'm also breaking that promise but like dad says… there are some times when breaking a promise is more important than keeping it. This is one of those times… and she doesn't have anyone to look after her… she doesn't have a big brother…how would I feel if it was Sammy and no one stepped up to help him? I'd be mad as hell… I wonder how his book report's going… ackh it's Sammy… he's probably got an A already…_ Dean smiled to himself and shook his head.

He heard the door open and startled, relieved when the principal returned with two cups of water, one for each of them.

"Thanks," Dean smiled tightly and sipped the cool liquid, his breathing seemed to slow and his eyes closed for just another moment as he gathered himself properly then set the cup on the desk blotter.

"Okay… so we were playing kickball… I was on 3rd base when Sandy's dad pulled up and waved her over. I saw her go from the passenger door to the driver side, I got distracted… I'm sorry… if I'd known I would've gone with her but I didn't know… I mean she always looks fine y'know?" he felt himself moving in the right track now as Principal Drafke nodded.

"Well… I'm last at bat so I look over to the car again and I don't see Sandy, then the car pulls away and she's on the ground… not sprawled or anything but not looking like she fell either… like she was pushed… so…" he shrugged awkwardly, even blushing a bit. He wasn't sure if it was because her name reminded him of his little brother, or if it was because she was just really cute and always had a smile for him, but he'd liked Sandy Harris the instant he'd met her, and what Dean Winchester aka Dean Stuart liked, he looked after.

"So you went over to see if she was okay?" the principal prompted.

Dean nodded, "Yeah… only she really wasn't…"

"How so Dean?" he asked somberly.

Dean nodded and swallowed, "Well I could tell someone hit her… it was fresh too cause it kept getting redder… right here…" he drew his finger along the upper ridge of his cheekbone, "but that wasn't the worst of it… now I didn't see much but it was enough… she was starting to cry but she didn't… you know her eyes were all full up… but right here…" he pulled down the neck of his t-shirt, "… right at her collarbone… I saw a big black bruise… I should've noticed it earlier since she was kinda favoring the left arm but I didn't… I should have but… it… I mean… I didn't know…" Dean felt his fury beginning to boil up once again. He'd seen enough abused kids in his young life to recognize the signs and somehow this one had managed to hide them from him.

"But Dean she hasn't been back to classes this afternoon… do you know where she is?" Principal Drafke asked.

Dean nodded, "Yeah… she said she couldn't face everyone, she made me promise not to tell anyone… and I know I lied but… it's important… and if I didn't promise I don't think she would've stayed there…"

"Is she at the barn?" the principal asked.

There was as place on Roseing Road that kids hung out. It was an abandoned farmhouse with a barn behind it. During the light hours on week days, and immediately after school it was pretty much swarmed over by the elementary and middle school kids, at night and on weekends it belonged to the High School kids for different kinds of education.

Dean nodded but held up his hand, "Please… Principal Drafke… if you're going to call the cops or anyone… let me go be with her when they come… don't make Sandy go through that alone okay? Please?" he asked wondering, hoping he'd made the right decision to take this to an adult rather to try and handle it himself or bring it to his dad, whenever he got back from the hunt he was on. If there was one thing that made John Winchester completely lose control, it was anyone hurting someone largely defenseless. Dean thought about the standard he'd learned from his father, that being; anyone that hurt a child, pregnant woman, or an old person, (keeping in mind that any of the above weren't possessed or evil), deserved an ass kicking that would leave them in a wheelchair for the rest of their days.

The principal couldn't help himself, he was proud of his newest student and rested his hand on his shoulder. "I bet your parents… I'm sorry… your dad is very proud of his young man…I'm going to ask you to do me a favor Dean… there are a few people I'm going to have to call, consult with about just what we can do. I want you to get Sandy's homework together, bring it to her and stay with her at the Barn. If there's something that we can do today we will, but if not you're going to have to understand that she might have to go home tonight…"

Dean nodded and swallowed hard, "Okay… I mean not okay but… she probably figures on having to go home tonight anyway… so okay… so we just act natural? That what you're saying?" he double checked.

Principal Drafke nodded, "That's exactly it. Now… does your brother know where the barn is?"

Dean nodded, "Yeah…"

"Okay… you go tell him to meet you there after school then go back to homeroom, Mrs. Trask will have your assignments ready and you can leave okay?"

Dean nodded and rose, his hand was on the door when the principal stopped him, "Do you need to call your dad or anything? Do you want me to call him? Let him know you're taking an excused absence for the day?"

Dean smiled and shook his head, "No… I'll explain it to him when he gets home… if he has any questions he'll call you…"

"Okay… we'll see you in class tomorrow morning though… and I might need to ask you some questions with some other adults here too… and Miss Harris might get very angry with you Dean… you do know that don't you?" he asked.

"Yes sir… I guess she just might…" he nodded and on impulse turned and faced the authority figure before him. He'd never had a penchant for anyone's authority but his fathers' or Caleb or Pastor Jim or even Shep, though Shep never really tried to be too bossy. He extended his hand and met the man's eyes, sizing him up boldly, which was part of his nature and probably why most people thought he was trouble at first glance.

Principal Drafke pressed his hand to Dean's and nodded with a sad but faint smile, "Thank you for coming to me with this Mr. Stuart…"

Dean nodded, "Thank you sir… for a lot of stuff…" he smiled, squeezed the adult hand and let himself out of the office to do as he'd been instructed.

--

"…you got 23?" Dean asked peering over their books toward Sandy's paper.

She covered her paper but smiled, "It's a preposition…" she gave him the answer anyway.

"Y'know I wish I knew how you get this stuff so easy…" Dean sighed watching her chew the tip of her pen and grinning, wondering what that pen felt like with her teeth nibbling on it.

"Well you get math so I guess we're just a good team huh?" she smiled catching sight of his expression. Something felt different and she looked at him with her eyes narrowed, "Dean… what did you say to get my homework?"

Dean felt his heart leap and swallowed but plastered on his most charming smile, "Just that you got sick during gym… and that I wanted to bring your homework to you…"

"Prfft!" Sam snorted across the hayloft but wisely kept his nose in his book. He'd gotten the A plus Dean expected on his oral report for the book Mists of Avalon which he'd read over the summer. There were advantages to being a late starter and the new kid in class after all, but honestly, Dean had expected no less from his little brother. Sam seemed to have a gift when it came to books. It was almost as if he could take a picture of the page and then go over it at his leisure.

Dean was good with math, perhaps even far better than average but when it came to English and Literature oriented stuff Sammy smoked him, even though he was four years younger, and man sometimes it made Dean downright furious! Fortunately they often relied on each others strengths to shore up their own… less than strong areas, so as was the case with Sandy… they made a good team.

At that particular thought Dean felt a twitch in his stomach, he knew his little brother, he knew what Sam craved over all else and he wondered how much longer it would be before he wound up either running away from home or turning his back on he and their dad entirely. The idea made Dean's guts clench and he decided he'd cross that bridge when the time came. As their dad frequently said, '…if you knew the future you'd avoid it…' so Dean shoved the idea of a life without his little brother hard to the side and decided to relish the time he had with him instead.

--

It's a short... and a WeeChester… so

what cha think? should I bother going on?

please R&R

You are the hope that keeps me trusting…

sifi.


	2. Chapter 2

Their Own Devices – Chpt 2

by: sifi

--

"… K…i… s…s...i…n…g…"

"Shut up Sam…"

"First comes love…"

"Sam…"

"Then comes marriage…"

"I'm warning you Sammy!"

"Then comes DEAN with the baby carriage…"

"That's it! You asked for it!" Dean grinned lunging for his little brother who 'whooped' and tore down the street laughing, completely unaware that Dean was holding back just enough to stay hot on his heels and spur him forward that much faster.

At the door to the apartment they were subletting Dean had to hold hard onto a belly laugh that threatened to give the game away as Sammy danced excitedly, trying to dig the key from his pocket to and open the door before Big Brother torment fell on him. Sadly, he wasn't fast enough.

His piercing eight year old voice screamed as Dean crushed into him, pinning him to the door jamb as his finger zeroed in effortlessly on the one spot that between the younger Winchester's ribs that sent him into fits of laughter.

They tumbled into the apartment laughing until Sam scrambled, pleading toward the bathroom where he slammed the door on his older brother. Dean turned changing gears smoothly with a satisfied smirk on his young face as he went into the kitchen and started getting dinner together.

--

"Dean?... Why was Sandy afraid to go home?" Sam asked with his hands behind his head as Dean turned the blinds, slats up, and made sure the bar was set into the window sash. Sam watched him from the corner of his eye as his older brother took a deep breath and nodded to himself before sitting on the edge of the bed and making sure Sam was tucked deep into his blankets.

"And how did you get out of school for the afternoon?" he added.

Dean smiled tightly wondering just how much he could or should tell Sam, "Some kids' parents…well I guess they get frustrated and they don't know how to deal with it…"

"What do you mean?" Sam asked, his brows furrowing in confusion as Dean wished he hadn't asked until their dad was back. This one was something an adult should be explaining. He decided the truth was the only way, no matter how much he might want to shelter Sam from some of the evils out there he couldn't explain what he couldn't understand himself.

"Some parents hit their kids Sam…" he said softly.

The doubtful look on Sam's face and his rolling eyes that presaged his, "Come on Dean… tell me for real…is there a ghost there? or a Ploterghust or something?"

"Pol… ter… geist Sam… and no… nothing like that… not that I know anyway…" Dean shook his head and watched the truth starting to sink into his thick headed little brother.

"No… no… Dean… parents take care of their kids… they don't… they wouldn't…" he stopped and swallowed hard at his brothers' emotionless countenance.

"Why would anyone do that?" he asked with a hushed mystified voice.

Dean could only shake his head, "I don't know... but some people do…"

"But Dean… what's gonna happen?" he asked drawing the blankets up to his neck and turning onto his side, his eyes never leaving Dean's.

"I don't know runt…"

"Shouldn't we tell somebody?" Sam asked.

"Already done Sammy… listen… if the grownups can do something to help Sandy they're gonna… but you can't tell anyone I told okay?"

Sam nodded but his expression belied his confusion. Shouldn't his big brother get credit for helping someone outside the family?

"Pinky swear runt…" he insisted holding up his pinkie.

Sam fulfilled his pinky-vow without hesitation but kept his eyes on Dean's though not without a huge amount of effort to keep them open.

"Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Why don't you want anyone to know? Is it cause dad's not here?"

Dean smiled and ruffed his little brother's thick wavy hair, "Can't put anything past you… but yeah… we don't need anyone finding out Dad's not here right now…"

"I think that sucks…" Sam yawned.

"What?"

"That you can't get credit for doing something good to help someone…" his voice was dropping quickly and his words were starting to slur a bit as sleep reached for the youngest Winchester.

"Hey… we'll know… that's gonna have to be enough…" he said softly watching his little brother drift off. He had a sudden urge that he hadn't felt in years to stretch out next to the boy beside him, hold him tight and make sure that no harm could ever come to him. Dean shook his head with a small smile and made sure Sam was tucked snugly beneath the blankets before turning out the light and returning to the kitchen where he had to finish the dishes as well as his homework.

_Though why I bother is a freakin' mystery…_he thought and smiled broadly this time, all he had left to do was math and Sandy had complimented him on his math skills. Maybe that was why he wanted to make sure he got the homework done. It wasn't often anyone complimented him on his scholastic skills.

--

Sandy Harris felt herself jump within her skin as the door to her room slammed open, the knob once again leaving a small pile of plaster on the floor she knew she'd have to clean up before getting into bed or there'd be hell to pay.

"Get downstairs and clean up the kitchen…" his voice reminding her of gargling rocks as his knobby knuckles and stringy muscles flexed and vibrated as he pointed to the stairs.

"Yes daddy…" she whispered rising quickly to her feet and skittering out of the room, under that muscular arm that she was far too familiar with. At the top of the stairs she thought she was going to make it, her heart was thundering in her chest and her nerves were singing as she heard that voice, his voice.

"What's this?!" he demanded as she drew to a halt, frozen halfway down the first step, "Get back here!"

She turned slowly, and moved to stand before him with her head bowed down, her eyes following the unseen line from his finger to the floor and the little pile of plaster dust that never seemed to stop.

"I give you a house to live in! A roof over your ungrateful head and this is how you pay me back! By breaking the walls! What do you think gives you the right? You're lucky you've got clothes on your back! No one else would give you half as much as I do you vile creature! Look at you! You're disgusting! How anyone could stand to be in the same room with you… I can't understand! You make me sick!..." he hollered, the timbre and depth of his voice ringing in her ears as his words echoed back and forth, rolling like a storm in her head. She nodded, unable to look up, unable to bear the sight of the hatred he harbored in those eyes. "Well!" he barked, the volume making her jump.

"I'm sorry daddy…" she fairly whispered.

"What else?!" he demanded.

"It won't happen again?" she asked hoping this was the right answer.

She could almost feel him nodded, "Damn right you ungrateful little bitch…! Now get on the floor and clean that up!"

Sandy Harris stepped back and knelt on the floor cupping one hand at the edge of the pile and started gathering the dust into a tidy little pile.

"Not like that!" he barked and shoved her into the wall with his foot so that her head and shoulder actually connected with the plaster. It wasn't that it was a blow that hurt, she'd had more than her fair share of those, but once again she felt the familiar sting of tears in the corners of her eyes as one question circled the inside of her head like one of those digital tickers that told news and stuff while you were waiting in line, _Why do I deserve this?_ She remained on all fours, her eyes fixed on that little pile while she waited for him to give the command. All her focus was split between keeping the tears from falling out of her eyes, and keeping her breath steady. If he heard the sound of a sob or a hitched breath it would only get worse.

"Eat your dinner…" he snarled and she could tell by his voice that he was smiling.

Sandy Harris drew a shaky breath, swallowed hard the sour in the back of her throat and tried to work up some spit to make the job easier. She knew the faster she could get it done the better. If it took too long he'd have her start cleaning the floor that way.

With her hand trembling despite being solid and pressing hard into the floor, she leaned forward holding her breath, it wouldn't do to blow the dust out of the neat little pile she'd gathered it into. She closed her eyes unwilling to look at the fuzz and hair and tiny bits of gray dirt mixed in with the white plaster. She felt it on her tongue and felt her stomach try to lurch. _Oh God no please don't let me throw up… lick-em-stix powder… that's all it is… just lick-em-stix powder… it's okay… it's okay_, she told herself as she cleaned up the mess the way HE wanted.

When she was done she hung her head further, looking down at her navel while still on all fours, "Tell me how delicious that was…"

"Delicious daddy thank you…" she sniffed.

"Now get to the kitchen…" he ordered, his temper cooled by her compliance.

Sandy nodded and started to push to her feet but she felt his boot on her shoulder, "I think you'll stay that way… you'll spend the rest of the night on your hands and knees as punishment for messing up your room…" he ordered.

"Yes daddy," she nodded and headed for the stairs feeling his eyes hot and gloating on her all the way. _Thank you God… it could've been so much worse! Thank you God… he's having a good day today…_ she acknowledged and set about cleaning up the rest of the family's dishes.

--

Dean sat forward in his chair, his eyes riveted to the T.V. set and the creepy old movie that he'd found playing on one of the boring stations. They didn't have cable in this apartment, well they weren't supposed to but dad had shown him how to hook into the neighbor's line so he usually was able to get some good channels. This time though the only thing that was on was some old movie about some skinny whiny boy-ish looking woman who was pregnant and having a rough time of it. She didn't like her neighbors, especially this old couple that acted like the child was going to be more theirs than hers.

His head cocked to the side as the husband kept defending the strange neighbors to his wife and a friend of theirs turned up dead. Some guy who'd given her a book… one that looked interesting, Dean made a note on the back of his hand and vowed to look up the book title to see if it was real or just a fake they'd made up for the movie. By the time the woman was giving birth he could feel his eyes wanting to close despite the adrenaline rush that was pounding his heart. All he wanted to know was if he was right or not! If he'd figured it out.

"…Guy's eyes are NORMAL!" the mother whined and circled the room full of cackling old people and the credits began to roll as he grinned and nodded, _Ha! I had it pegged! anyone gonna drink some green milkshake that's not a shamrock shake at McDonalds got some serious evil issues to deal with! Heh! A Devil's baby! Damn I'm good!_ he thought sitting back with the remote in hand and flipped through the channels once more, hoping to postpone going to bed just a little longer. Sometimes at night his head swam with things and he couldn't fall asleep, thankfully most of the time Sammy's light snoring lulled him quickly into his own dream world where Mom was still alive, Dad was taking him on hunting trips for deer and pheasant and such and Sammy could play soccer to his heart's content.

He checked the locks and shut off the lights moving almost eagerly now into the bedroom where thoughts of happy dreams flowed smoothly around the boulders of reality in his mind. In his t-shirt and sweats he climbed into bed and lay on his side looking at his little brother, grateful to have him in his life, and grateful for a father who loved them.

--

tbc?

should I bother?

I know I know… I always ask… but I need to know

is anyone still interested?

Please R&R

Thanks.

sifi


	3. Chapter 3

Their Own Devices – s.n. fic chpt 3

by: sifi

--

As the school day progressed Dean could feel his muscles tightening and his nerves singing in anticipation of someone, some adult doing something to help his cute new friend from three rows over. He felt himself grow hot and sweaty every time she looked at him and smiled that gentle smile of hers. Her eyes were clear and bright and though he could see something tight and hidden deep inside her, something he hadn't known was there until yesterday, it now called to him like a beacon in the night. It begged him to do something, to somehow, some way rescue her from her life. He wasn't sure she knew it was there at all, and he wondered if anyone else had ever seen it.

By lunchtime recess he couldn't take the strain anymore and ran from the classroom as the bell was ringing. If he heard her call his name he'd stop and go eat lunch with her and then he'd never know what was going to happen or when.

The main door for the office was always open during school hours, but inside, he would have to bypass the receptionist and any other administrators who were around. To his surprise the receptionist nodded at him as he entered, as if she expected him, then he realized she did.

"Mr. Stuart, Principal Drafke's in a meeting… you can take a seat and wait for him," she directed pointing to the big scoop style plastic chair just outside the principal's office door.

Dean didn't have long to wait in reality, though he'd never paid much attention to just how long it took twenty minutes to actually pass. There were a couple times when he thought the adults were getting ready to open the door and come out but he'd been wrong.

He sat still, straining to hear anything at all from behind that obscenely effective barrier. Once in a while an indecipherable murmur told him there was actual conversation taking place in the room. When the door finally did open, he was chagrined at his own startlement. He'd been concentrating so hard but the warm smile from Principal Drafke slowed his pounding heart.

"Mr. Stuart… would you join us please…" he invited while holding the door open.

Dean stood at the edge of the threshold, his experienced eye scanning the office quickly and even peering through the crack, just to make sure there was no one hiding behind the door. These moments of observation were often misread by adults as shyness or in a worst case scenario, as the result of a guilty conscience. Fortunately in the case of principal Drafke, it was read as the former rather than the latter.

"Dean this is Mrs. Collins, she works for the Department of Child Welfare," he explained while ushering the boy into the office and closing the door.

"Mrs. Collins, this is Dean Stuart."

"Nice to meet you Mr. Stuart…"

"Ma'am…" Dean nodded shaking the offered hand.

--

"Boy is she mad at you!" Sam huffed skittering from Dean's side to trying to get a look at his downward cast face before falling back at his side.

"I've never heard a girl use those words…" he added and skittered again. Even at eight years old Sam could understand that what his big brother had tried to do to help that cute girl he liked, had backfired.

"I know… I hope she cools off over the weekend…" Dean sighed, his innards churning in turmoil. Sandy was going to be stuck in her house without the reprieve of school for the whole weekend. He shook his head oddly able to understand the idea that to someone who suffered so much at home, the weekend that most children looked forward to, cherished and celebrated, not to mention holiday vacations and the biggie, Summer Break… was bound to be clusters of time spent in the bowels of despair.

It didn't help that he couldn't get the stricken look on her face out of his mind, or how he eyes shone with hurt and betrayal before she turned her back on him and walked away. _Way to go Dean! The only friend you've made in almost three weeks and you find the worst way to completely and totally piss her off… she said I'm not her friend anymore, I was trying to be Sandy…I swear. _

He'd jogged after her a bit, still able to see her turn around in his minds' eye. The fear on her face, the pulse pounding in her throat and the faint bobbing of her shoulders as she tried to control her breathing and hold back the sobs he could feel she wanted to let out. _"Sandy I'm sorry… I mean… I'm not… but… I am! Sandy Nobody has a right to hurt you!... not EVEN your parents!" _he'd tried to make her understand.

"_You told on me Dean… I thought you were my friend!"_

"_I AM Sandy… don't you get it? You're a KID! There's three kinds of people you don't pick on… one of 'em's kids! Especially not the people who're supposed to protect you…" _

But she'd shaken her head, her eyes threatening to spill their liquid jewels and said in a small and frightened voice that sent shivers up his spine, _"You don't understand… you don't know what he might do… he's an ogre! Just leave me alone Dean… you're not my friend anymore!"_ and with that last sting she'd walked away, her shoulders slumped more from the weight of his betrayal than her backpack.

Dean barely noticed through the course of the evening that Sam finished his homework, except for the math which he usually needed some help with, and in exchange he would go over Dean's Reading homework and make sure it was mostly right as far as he could tell.

"Raviolo's or pizza Sam?" he asked staring into the refrigerator distractedly. He'd have to get to the store in the morning. Dad was due to be back Sunday night and they could do a real shopping job but there was no more milk and they were down to the heels of the bread which was never a good sign between two boys.

"Pizza! Pizza! Pizza for Friday night movies… are we gonna watch Sengoolie?" he asked wondering if Dean knew what movie was going to be played.

"He's playing The Blob…you wanna watch that again or see if we can find something on cable?" but he already knew the answer, Sam would want to watch The Blob. For some reason Dean couldn't fathom the movie tickled his younger brother to no end.

"Blob, blob, blob, Sengoolie! YAY!" Sam cheered laughing, hoping he was going to be able to pry a smile out of his big brother if he kept acting silly. He watched Dean turn the oven on, unwrap the store brand sausage pizza and slide it from the cardboard backing onto the wire rack, situating it just perfectly so that the ends didn't fall through the wires and make a mess in the bottom of the oven once it started to thaw.

He set the timer and sat down next to his little brother, showing him once more, with interminable patience the ritual, method and mathematical madness that was long division. Sadly, even Sam could tell Dean's focus wasn't on what they were doing in that room, they were focused on a little girl in a house that was built out of nightmares.

Sam shook his head, he didn't want to think about Sandy. He liked her just fine for a girl but the bad part of her life had made a crack in the way he saw the world and he wasn't really too keen on that part of her. She was also causing his brother pain, both with her mean words and that she'd told him he wasn't her friend anymore because he told. Sam had wanted to tell her that Dean hadn't told on HER… he'd told on her DAD and that was something different. Sam wanted to tell her a lot of things about his big brother, but he pinkie swore, and that was pretty big.

As Dean could have predicted, by eleven o'clock, with his own eyelids starting to droop, Sam was sound asleep with his head on Dean's lap, curled on his side with his knees so far up his chest Dean could only wonder how he managed to breathe. He'd long ago lost feeling in his right leg but he didn't care, it matched the numbness that wouldn't stop gnawing at his insides. He'd been so sure he was doing the right thing in taking the problem to an adult, but now he wondered if maybe he should have waited for dad to get home and just let him take care of it. After all, ghosts, poltergeists and things that go bump in the night weren't the only evil's out there. Finally, when he could feel his eyelids dropping for what could be very nearly the last time that night, he shook Sam, shook the feeling back into his leg and wrangled his groggy, pizza and soda satisfied baby brother to his feet, his arm around Dean's neck as he shambled him into the bedroom and tucked him in, comforted by the nightly ritual and once more nearly shaken by the urge to stretch out next to him and keep him safe, and maybe feel a little comfort for himself too.

He tiredly made his rounds, checking doors and windows and making sure the oven was off even though he distinctly remembered turning the knob. Dad had taught him it was still better to double check, and honestly, he wasn't eager to take the chance on starting a fire considering what they'd all already lost to one.

Finally back in the bedroom he skipped the changing of his clothes and simply face planted onto the bed. He was out so fast he never heard Sam creep out of his own bed, he didn't feel his little brother climb up next to him or spread his own blanket over them both but he did inch back just a bit as Sammy's little arm came to rest over his back lending whatever comfort he could.

--

Sam awoke to the smell of warm strawberry pop tarts wafting through the apartment, and the sound of Saturday morning cartoons on the t.v. and from the sound of it, Ren and Stimpy was on. He nearly leaped out of bed and stumbled in a tangle of blanket, his feet getting caught on the frayed edge as he doubled over the corner of his bed having forgotten that he'd crawled into Dean's. He looked out into the living room to see Dean looking into the room and shaking his head with a smile on his face, "You might as well bring it out with you… we'll make a fort… bring the pillows too…"

"YAY!" Sam shouted grinning hugely as he untangled himself while dancing just enough to get the point across.

"Just don't pee on the blanket…"

Sam scowled finally stepping free of the blanket's sinister grip and ran with a look of almost priceless panic on his face that made Dean laugh.

"Dude shut the door! You runnin' some kind of peep show 'er something?" he called teasingly.

"Ha ha!" Sam scoffed emerging from the bathroom a moment later and hoping to gross Dean out by splashing him with fingers full of water.

"Pop Tarts! Where'd you get 'em? Did you go to the store already?" he asked opening the fridge and frowning at the same emptiness that had been there last night.

"I did a black magic ceremony and made them invisible just to you," Dean said straight faced sliding the paper plate on top of the refrigerator so it was out of Sam's reach.

"Liar… we don't have that many candles…" Sam countered.

"C'mon we hafta make the fort first…"

"Who says?" Sam asked jumping up for the plate.

"I say… and I'm the oldest so what I say goes…"

"Nuh uh!"

"Uh huh… when dad gets back tomorrow we'll ask him… till then you just have to believe me…" he gazed deep into the younger Winchester's eyes and felt his mouth tremble as they both tried valiantly to hold back their smiles and subsequent snickers.

--

"Hurry up Dean! I gotta go!"

"I swear to God Sammy you better learn to hold it!" Dean grumbled while digging into his jeans pocket.

"I HAVE been… forever… it's not my fault!"

The agonized look on his little brothers face sparked a sigh of empathy as he threw the apartment door open and watched Sam sprint for the bathroom. Out of curiosity he looked at the clock on the wall and nodded. He hadn't realized it was after twelve already. He quickly unloaded the few provisions his last ten dollars had bought, a loaf of bread, some bologna, half a dozen cans of 'The Chef's Best', milk and some store brand rip on Lucky Charms.

He'd just turned to go back to the front door and close it when a round pale face peppered with freckles and some heavy duty glasses, peeked his head in and knocked on the jamb tentatively. _Oh Man! it's Cousin Oliver!_

"Uh… hi…" he said shyly to the much larger boy standing before him.

"Hi,"

"Ca.. can Sam? Is Sam home?" he asked.

Dean nodded, "Who're you?"

"Ralph… Hi!" Sam called grinning his way to the door, "Dean this is Ralph Butterman, he's in my class…"

_Yeowch… Ralph Butterman? Sure it's not Butter ball? Oh not nice Dean! well he's a chunky one…but kid, change your name... seriously. _

"Uh… I just wanted to see if you wanted to come out and play some soccer with us at the park…" Ralph asked and seemed surprised when Sam looked askance at his big brother.

"The park at the school?" Dean asked.

Ralph nodded.

"How many other kids are gonna be there?"

"We've got seven so far… so Tommy and Renee are trying to get a few more together so we can kinda play real teams…"

Sam looked at him, his plea obvious and almost as comical as when he had to go to the bathroom.

"Got your watch on?" Dean asked.

Sam showed him the Bart Simpson on his wrist, "What time?"

"Five thirty," Dean nodded.

Sam whooped and stepped out into the early afternoon.

"Remember the rules Sam!" Dean called. Sam turned back and met his eyes.

"I will," he nodded.

Dean was just about to step back into the apartment and close the door when Ralph, aka Cousin Oliver stopped and ran back, "You're Dean?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"This was sticking under the welcome mat…I guess it's for you," he said pressing a folded and taped piece of pink flowered stationary into Dean's hand.

Dean had seen that paper on more than one occasion, and he knew the sure hand that had written his name. He slit the tape with his thumb nail and opened the note.

"Dean,

I need help and since you started this it's only fair that I'm asking you. Please, I'm sorry I said the things I did but I need to leave… and you HAVE to help! and this time DON'T tell anyone! You know where to meet me.

Sandy."

and there was a heart drawn before her name.

"Oh boy," he sighed and retreated into the apartment to gather a few things together and write Sam a note just in case the runt got home before he did.

--

Sam got up off the couch and went to the phone in the kitchen. He picked up the receiver and dialed half the number before he put the phone back.

_8:30… it's only 8:30… but…it's late! He's at the barn.. they just lost track of time maybe… yeah right… Dean lose track of time for THIS long? I don't think so… I should go find him… No… I should call Pastor Jim…eeew maybe they're kissing and stuff… oh man he'd never forgive me… and Pastor Jim's a long way away… he'd take a long time to get here… probably by the time he did Dean'll be back… _he nodded and shrugged into his jacket then made sure he had his key in his pocket before heading out into the dark, out at a time of night he wasn't supposed to leave the house, motel room, apartment, wherever they were at the time. He was NEVER supposed to go out at night, and NEVER NEVER supposed to go out at night without Dean. _But he's not here! I'm going to go get him! Then we'll be together and it'll be alright! _it seemed perfectly logical for an 8 year old.

--

tbc.

sifi

please R&R, let me know what you think so far?

Please…


	4. Chapter 4

Their Own Devices – Chpt 4.

By: sifi

--

"Sandy? Are you okay?" Dean asked crossing the barn quickly and kneeling in front of his friend. It was obvious she'd been crying for quite some time, her knees were drawn up to her chest and her forehead was resting on them. Even from the door he'd seen her shoulders bobbing and he'd been able to hear her sniffling and whimpering. His heart leaped in his chest wondering what kind of terrible thing her father had done to her.

"Sandy look at me…" he urged reaching out for her shoulder. With a heave of effort she rolled backward and Dean felt his heart begin to hammer in his chest as he caught sight of the rope that bound her torso to her thighs. "Oh hell…" he breathed casting a quick glance over his shoulder toward the barn door.

--

When he came around he had a vague memory of Sandy's muffled cry, and the sensation of a very short lived flight before a plank board wall tried to catch him but fumbled. He felt his body squirming and straining as he realized he was surrounded by darkness and that he was firmly tied.

"Aaaa…eee?" he tried to speak through the duct tape over his mouth.

"Eee?" she replied through choked sobs and sniffles.

On his side Dean wiggled his hands around, trying to work the knot that bound him, trying to work some slack into the rope. His fingertips brushed warm skin and behind him Sandy choked on a squeal until she realized it was him. Before he knew it he felt her fingers intertwine with his and give a squeeze. He grunted and grasped her hand, trying to urge her fingers up his wrists until she felt the rope, and he felt the tension change on it while she got the point and tried to figure out how to work it.

Neither of them knew how long they'd been in the trunk of the car, or how long the car had been on the road, but inside his mathematically inclined head Dean was counting. If all he could do was try and determine how far away they were going from the time he woke up, well he hoped he'd wind up with more information than he currently thought.

He groaned and felt his eyes roll up into his head as Sandy shifted and her foot came up square into his crotch from behind. Her subsequent apology, despite the duct tape over her own mouth was unmistakable and Dean let out a small groan with an affirmative sound that told her he knew it was an accident. _Yeah… still that'll wake a guy up!... Yeowch!... what is it with girls and hard shoes? Man this is sooo many roads away from good…how'm I gonna get us out of this? I don't even know where we're going… dad always said if anyone ever tried to take us we shouldn't let them take us to another location, the second location is where you wind up dead…it's not like I had much choice here… man my head hurts! If that's what being unconscious feels like I'm not gonna let that happen again! Bastard clocked me hard though… think Dean… Think… what do you remember? _he gently started coaxing images out from under the back stairs of his mind. The place he kept things that made his guts squirm. _God Sammy…please let Sammy be safe… thank God I left him that note… not like he can do much… but at least when Dad gets back he'll know where to start looking for the trail… if I can't get us out of this myself that is... ._

He knew Sandy was doing her best in this swaying and nausea inducing darkness to try and get him loose but her nails scratching into his skin and the rope burns around his wrists were getting harder to ignore. He was on the edge of thinking that if they could just get out of the trunk that he'd find a way to get out of this without her fingernails shredding his skin, when the car stopped and in a small moment of panic he found his inner voice taking it back. Still, this was a man that had him and Sandy in the trunk of his car, a man who was part of a community, who had a family, and a history, and someone who couldn't very easily go missing with two children while leaving the rest of the family behind. There were bound to be alarms raised, and the more he thought about it, he was growing increasingly glad he'd told principal Drafke what he had, that way if they went missing _Or worse…_ he thought, there'd be an immediate suspect.

Dean didn't know exactly what to expect when the trunk opened but blindingly bright late afternoon sunshine wasn't it. Still, he was grateful for the bright yellow warmth that seemed intent on driving a spike through his eyes and made his head pound harder.

Even squinting all he could see was a knobby mountain of shadow hiding in the corona of light, but hands like rocks grabbed him, fingers sinking deep into a knee and a shoulder and he was airborne again for a split second before he found himself in the very undignified position of being slung over a mountainous rocky shoulder while Sandy was likewise situated on the other side.

"Teach you to talk about your betters you little snot nosed piece of shit… telling stories to get ME in trouble? HA! You're gonna know exactly what trouble is when I'm done with you… BOTH of you!" he grumbled carrying them both into what might have been the most ramshackle structure in the entire state, then dropping them carelessly on the floor.

--

_Okay this is so freakin' Hansel and Gretel it's not even funny! Sammy I swear if I get out of this I'll NEVER tell you that story again! NEVER…_he promised with a far greater understanding of why his little brother got so easily freaked out when threatened with it. It was a horrible tale! _Never been a fan of Grimm's brothers myself anyway! I'll take the Time Life Enchanted World series any damned day! What I wouldn't give to stretch my legs out!_ he thought and turned his head so the bar of the cage he was in could press into a different part of his face. Everything his father had ever taught him about maintaining stillness was brought into play for this moment. He kept his breathing even, keeping his muscles as relaxed as possible given the circumstances. If he got a cramp he wasn't sure if he'd be able to deal with it. He'd also been taught that counting yourself first among your assets was paramount. He wasn't physically injured, just terribly uncomfortable, crammed into an iron cage that had probably been meant for little more than perhaps a single parrot, and he was pretty sure that from the outside he must look like one of those cartoon characters stuffed into a box two sizes too small. What made matters worse was that he was still gagged with duct tape and the ropes had been adjusted so that he was now hog-tied and his knees were killing him.

Sadly, despite what was going on outside the cage, in that dirty little hovel of a shack, before his very eyes, he still wished for just a moment to trade places with Sandy just so he could stretch his legs. He'd tried closing his eyes a few times but her father threatened to cut his eyelids off and so as the hours passed, he continued to watch, but he also spent a good amount of time examining Mr. Harris. There was something about him that was… off.

--

Sam could hear music coming from within the barn, music that sounded a lot like the kinds of stuff his dad and Dean listened to, so he knew the High Schoolers were in there, his problem was multifold, he wasn't tall enough to look into the windows or even to climb up into the loft and get a peek that way and he wasn't sure if Dean and Sandy were still in there, and what kind of situation they might have found themselves in. High Schoolers were notorious for being mean to grade school kids if they got their hands on them.

He shut off his flashlight, felt for the switchblade in his pocket and chose the direct route. He pushed the door open and stepped inside, his nose filling with smoke of varying flavors and the smell of dad's favorite whiskey, under those fresh odors was a different smell that made him think of dirty laundry. He looked around, some kids were just sitting around smoking and drinking, others were kissing and doing other stuff that made him look sharply away and blush, one was practicing on a guitar while another drummed on a bale of hay but most of them were just talking.

"Hey! What're you doin' here shrimp?!" a boy with long dark hair called after pulling his nose from a book.

"I'm looking for Dean…" Sam answered stepping toward the boy.

"Anybody named Dean lose a shrimp?" he called, then repeated the effort more loudly until he got a series of various negative responses.

Sam stepped closer to the dark haired boy and held his hand over his head, "He's about this big… he's twelve… he left a note that he was going to be here with Sandy…she's twelve too... and has blonde hair…"

"Sarah you got a kid brother… would you get it away from me? I don't know what to do with it…" dark haired boy nudged a dark haired girl that was bopping along with her walkman.

"My name is Sam… I'm not an IT… and if my brother isn't here then he's in trouble… I need help and I can't go to grown ups…" Sam asserted stepping even closer to the boy who eyed him with some mix of expressions it would take at least a decade before he'd begin to understand.

Sarah sat up and shut her walkman off looking at the young boy in front of her.

"Sam?" she asked and he nodded. "Weren't you playing soccer with Ralph, Freddie, Renee and a bunch of other kids…"

"Yeah…"

"Snotface was there too?" she asked.

Sam nodded, "You mean Hank? Yeah… he's got allergies… Dean does too…"

"Why can't you go to the grown ups?" she asked.

Sam shifted on his feet and looked down for the first time, "I'm not supposed to tell," he tried to get out of answering the question.

"Then I guess we can't help you…" she challenged haughtily crossing her arms over her chest and turning her face away.

"Because my dad had to drive a load to Nebraska and he left Dean in charge of me for the weekend..." he explained.

"Dude did you say Sandy? You don't mean the little Harris girl do you?" the boy looked from Sam to Sarah.

"Yeah… she… she needs help, and Dean tried to help her… and he's in trouble, I just know!" Sam tried to push back the tears that wanted to fall out of his eyes but they wouldn't stop stinging.

"Jesus man… Harris?!...Dumb freakin' newbies… what'd he go getting into that mess for anyway? Everybody knows that family's f'ed up!"

"Jared, if he did something to Sam's brother this is bigger than that town boogeyman crap…" Sarah said softly.

"Boogeyman? The Boogeyman's…" Sam stopped himself before he could spill anything that might make them not even try to help, "…a fairy tale…" he finished though he knew it wasn't really so.

Sarah crouched before the eight year old boy in front of her, "Sam… you better tell me everything…" she suggested and Sam knew he had to do some quick thinking, fortunately he'd been taught well.

--

"….on your own or so help me I'll pour it up your nose until you choke on it!" Mr. Harris snarled and watched Sandy's eyes flick to Dean's, "…don't you look at him! He's not gonna help you! What? Do you like those pretty green eyes of his?" he sneered as her face turned down to the floor and she shook her head, "You wanna see what's inside them? I'll pluck them out for you one at a time… peel them open and feed you the fluid inside… would you like that?" he asked.

"No!" she gasped, her mouth agape in horrified belief, she raised her dirt and tear streaked face to look at her father, "Please daddy… I'm sorry… I'm sorry…" she sniffed and looked into the slop bucket under her face.

Behind the tape over his mouth Dean went from a generalized sense of queasiness to genuine nausea, and he could feel himself starting to shake as fear gained the upper hand in its battle with his training. It was less exactly how_ graphically_ he'd suggested plucking out his eyes, but it was how he'd said it, as if he'd done it before, as if he might even enjoy it. And to add to his increasing discomfort Dean was regretting laughing at Sam for his 'gotta-pee' dance.

He swallowed hard and felt his eyes tearing for Sandy as she leaned over the bucket on the floor and dug her hand into it. He groaned and felt bile start to burn in the back of his throat as the sound of her slurping up the concoction reminded him of exactly what was in there. _You sick bastard…you are SO going down! I swear I'm gonna get out of this and you are gonna ROT forever! Salting and burning's too good for you! You're going to jail you son of a bitch… I've heard stories about what they do to people like you who hurt kids! I've heard lots of things… heh… Instant Karma's gonna get you…sick son of a bitch…_ he only wished he felt as certain as his thoughts sounded.

Mr. Harris threw a look of smug gratification over his shoulder at Dean as he crossed the shack, first sticking his foot under his daughters' heaving and hitching belly, and in one deft motion tossing her across the room into a wall. She fell mewling and whimpered it back even as Dean barked his own rather meager protestation.

He watched the man bare his teeth in what he supposed was a smile and as he passed by the cage in which Dean was captive and suspended, he gripped an iron bar loosely and set the contraption spinning.

Dean felt his stomach lurch as hot acid popped up in his throat again, this time stinging the back of his nose with enough force to ensure that he wouldn't be able to choke it down, _Well I can cross spinny rides off my list of carnival favorites…_he thought.

It was coming no matter how hard he tried to clamp down on himself from the inside. With each rotation of the cage he caught sight of Mr. Harris' back as the enormous and cruel man ducked down to stir the fire in the stone hearth before throwing another couple logs into the glowing orange maw. _Oh God please…_ he thought feeling another of the things he'd been dreading, tears in his eyes, in part from the sweat that was running down his face in the small hot space. Mostly the impending tears were because the cage was still spinning and with the duct tape still over his mouth, the hot acid of his retch that clawed its way up his throat had no other route of escape than his nose.

The whole front of his head lit on fire from the inside, his sinuses and eyes burned from the pressure and he felt his stomach clench for another explosion as he was forced to swallow down the thick mucous of his stomach acid that lurched into his sealed mouth.

He closed his eyes against the second wave as the burning pain seared out again and he whimpered trying not to choke on his first sob of many to come.

In the periphery of his awareness he heard that gargling voice though it took a moment before the meaning of the words came clearly through the fire in his head. He felt himself go up, then come down, then rise up again.

"You hear me boy?" unwashed breath flew into his face. He felt cold against the bridge of his nose and snapped his eyes open meeting the cruelty in front of him as bravely as he could. He saw his own knife pressed to his face, "Young punk like you probably a fan of that Aussie Crocodile Dundee guy huh?" he asked pinching the free side of Dean's nose against the iron bar. He ran his hand down the exposed part of the boy's cheek and through the spew still dripping down onto the floor, leisurely he rubbed it over the helpless boy's face.

Dean tried to draw back but only managed to whimper again beneath the groan that escaped around a slick burst of snot and un-ejected bile.

"I say it's time to put the shrimp on the barbie…" he gurgled that strange guttural laugh and with the cage in hand, turned toward the oven.

--

tbc.

Please… let me know what you're thinking…

sifi


	5. Chapter 5

The Own Devices – chpt 5.

by: sifi

--

"Tell me the boogeyman story…" Sam asked holding tight to the seatbelt and looking earnestly at Sarah. She glanced at him and felt her mouth turn down, _I gotta be nuts! This is insane! I should be taking him to the police or something…_ she thought and felt herself caught up in the liquid plea of those blue-green eyes.

She sighed, "A few years ago there was a woman who moved to town with her little boy, he was about your age. The story goes that he said Mr. Harris… hurt him one day just because he was on his property… not long after the kid told on him, the little boy disappeared…" she cast a quick glance at the young boy beside her, his lips were pressed tight and there was more anxiety than she'd ever seen before on such a young face. He was obviously more frightened than she'd ever seen a kid that age, but she got the feeling that it wasn't because of the story she was relaying, he was scared for his brother. Still the depth of his concern struck her hard. "Why the hell am I telling you this kid? This isn't a goddamned bedtime story… this is town history…" she insisted seeming to grow angry, more with herself than with him.

"You HAVE to… there's stuff you're not telling me… you have to say EVERY thing…" he prodded while trying hard to keep the whine out of his voice. He needed every fact he was going to be able to get if he was going to help Dean. He remembered what Sandy said, he felt the word clanging against the walls of his head and wondered in the end who's set of facts would prove more accurate, the Grimm's brothers, or Time Life. He hoped it was Time Life 'cause he knew his knife was steel and he had no idea how to cook a meal inside of an acorn. _They can be anything…Elves, Faeries, Trolls, and yeah… even Ogres…so if I can't get it to go'way like a chain-ling… maybe the steel will kill it… but what if he's just a bad man? If he's hurting Dean I don't care! Dad showed us…I could do it for Dean…_he started gearing himself up and ran his hand along the back of his head, feeling for the notch in the center of the base of the skull, the exact place to slam his blade with everything he had to kill a man or a beast, whichever it was that was trying to take his big brother from him.

"You're a creepy little thing you know that?" she sighed then frowned as she watched her words leave pain on his face, "Sorry kid… it's just that this guys' bad news okay? The whole Harris family has never been anything but trouble in this town… smart folks stay away from them…don't get involved…"

"My brother's smart! He just didn't know…that's all…" Sam leaped to his big brother's defense with a roaring lion in his chest.

"Alright… alright… I didn't mean anything… jeez kid… relax okay? I should be taking you to the damned police y'know…" she sniped.

"NO! You can't!" Sam protested as the lion rose again and roared its warning, "Please… tell me… what'd they say happened to the little boy?" he asked.

"Dude it's gross…" she warned.

"Tell me… please…" he whispered desperately.

"Well the story goes that the next door neighbor saw old man Harris come out into the backyard later that same night the boy went missing, said he saw him butchering something…"

"The boy?" Sam asked and swallowed hard.

Sarah nodded, "Now the neighbor guy was a crazy old geezer who wound up in a nuthouse not too long after that so who's to say if he was right or crazy or telling the truth or…what… but… he said he sat in the window watching old man Harris toss parts that looked strangely human into some big ass witch's type pot…"

"A cauldron?" Sam asked and smiled shyly as she looked at him somehow surprised that he might know the word when she hadn't been able to think of it.

"Yeah… a cauldron…well the story goes that the Harris family ate an awful lot of soup for a while… whatever he didn't cook they said he ground up for fertilizer and sold to one of the farmers on the edge of town…" she looked over and even in the darkness of evening she could see the color drop out of the kids face as he swallowed hard but seemed to hold his own.

Instinctively she reached over and patted his knee, "Hey kid it's just a small town's tall tale y'know? No proof… probably more small town boredom and gossip than any chance of anything real right?" she asked feeling cold shivers starting to blossom in the pit of her belly.

"Right… then why are you helping me if you don't believe it…" Sam muttered watching her turn her face back to the road, her expression stony.

It was Sarah's turn to swallow hard though she hoped the kid beside her didn't see it, "I don't know…" she admitted turning her car onto the small two lane road that would take them to the edge of a twenty-five square mile tract of wilderness. It was said that Old Man Harris was born and raised in a tiny shack just a few miles in and Sarah as well as most teens who'd been raised with the Kid Soup story had figured, if there was any place he would ever take someone he wanted to get rid of, it would be that little shack he'd grown up in. The problem was that the only shack in the area was a hunters' flop that almost all of the community had used at one time or another, during the season.

_Except it IS between seasons… and it would be the perfect time to… oh come ON Sarah! what the hell are you doing?! Why the hell are you going along with some eight year old kid with a freaky boogeyman fetish? What the hell do you think you're doing? You're buying into this shit!... God am I stupid! If his brother's missing I gotta get this kid to the police! _a superstitious part of her mind disguised itself with rationality as she slowed the car and started to make a three point turn on the narrow road.

"What're you doing?" Sam asked with wide panicked eyes.

"I'm turning around and taking you to the police! Like I should've done in the beginning!" she stormed yanking on the wheel fiercely.

"No! You can't! Please!" Sam pleaded but he recognized the resolve on her face. It was the same look his dad got when he asked why he had to go away and leave them alone, or why they had to leave a place at all and move on to the next one.

Sam Winchester was a speedy little bugger when he wanted to be. He pressed the seatbelt latch and opened the passenger door, tossing himself out onto the ground at the same moment the car stopped so she could put it into reverse. He leaped to his feet with her voice reaching out behind him, calling his name even as he disappeared into the black shadows of the nighttime forest.

--

Cold wet heaviness slopped over Dean's face. It slid up his nose, blocking his breath then into his mouth as he opened it to gasp. It slid down his throat, the taste acrid and vile and pregnant with rot. His stomach clenched and he tossed to his side feeling all warmth flow from his body. The first tremor began in the deep of him, its tendrils shooting out in every direction as heat exploded into his face then dissipated just as quickly, leaving him dripping wet and shivering madly.

It dawned on him in a peripheral sense, that he was no longer gagged with duct tape, and he was no longer within the confines of the cage. He threw himself to the left and the right, the red pin-prickly burning skin of his eyelids peeling away layers to open. The memory of the oven door opening, the blast of searing heat that collided into him and wrapped itself around, squeezing the breath out of his body, stealing from his lungs, feeding on it and depriving him of it. He remembered his body loosing a flood and felt the horribly dry heat of his clothes feeling like little patches of fire against his skin. He could hear the echoes of his own screams and muted pleas inside his head behind the tape that had covered his mouth, as minutia rolled back into his consciousness one grain at a time.

_I…uhm…please…I wanna go home…please…God help me get home…I want dad…_ he breathed sharply and felt the comparatively cool air renew the fire in his scorched lungs. He choked on a rasping cough that felt like needles and tasted like blood. As much as he knew he wanted to cry, and felt the tears trying to come, it scared him that they couldn't. He wanted to smell his dad's heavy leather jacket laden with the scent of sweat and whiskey, and smoke and cordite but all he could smell was the remnants of his own stomach acid as it had been burned into his nose, _I want Sammy… oh God… who's gonna look after Sammy if I'm not there? Who's gonna protect him? Dad won't know he gets scared when the thunder's so close it shakes the windows, dad won't crawl in behind him and tell him its gonna be okay… he's never had to… that's MY job…That's what I'm for…so dad doesn't have to worry about those things…I'm scared… it's okay to be scared that's what dad says…it's okay to be scared but you still have to do the job… and that means getting out of here… both of us. Where is Sandy?_ he wondered and looked around, his eyes hot and dry. He also knew he had to get a fix on Mr. Harris' position.

An explosion of insight struck him, settling the pieces of the puzzle into their proper places, painting the picture for him.

_Hansel and Gretel…son of a bitch! I was right… sort of…Sandy said he was an ogre… what if he's a REAL Ogre? It's steel for them right? that's why the iron doesn't bother him…but my knife is stainless steel..._

"..ah..ndy?" he rasped and tried to work some fluid into his mouth to help his throat, "…Sandy? Where are you?" he asked.

"Saaaandy where aaaare you…." that gargling voice mocked as the sloped and knobby countenance that was Mr. Harris's face glanced through a small window, "She's a little busy right now… washing for dinner…"

"Don't hurt her…" Dean said softly and heard gasping and splashing outside the window as the huge mountain of a man's shoulder seemed to bob up and down. "Please…"

The splashing stopped and his shoulder seemed to jam downward just before Dean heard a gasp, grunt and shriek followed by a series of gasping and choking sobs that spoke of a very scary sounding kind of pain.

"Stop it! Stop it! Please…" he cried trying to push himself to his knees, "Whatever you want… please don't hurt her anymore… just let us go…" his voice cracked as he headed across the floor on knees that wobbled coltishly while the tiniest of tears finally formed the finest film over his eyes.

"Staaaahp it… Puhleeeese… you pansy ass little punk… crying like a good for nothing girl… you wanna cry like a girl? Maybe I oughtta give you somethin' to cry about… maybe I oughtta _make_ you a girl huh?... shouldn't be too hard, a little squirt like you, piss poor gene pool if you ask me…" he gurgled and made a motion that was hidden by the wall even as he made the noise, "Schwiiing…" he watched the boy on the floor tremble and crouch protectively over himself. His hearty laugh nearly hid from the back of Dean's awareness the sound of Sandy's sobs choking deep, and sounding even more 'wrong' if that was possible.

"Mr. Harris please… I swear I won't tell anyone anything…" _like that you're an Ogre…_ "I promise okay? I'll say I misunderstood… I'll say anything you want me to…" _and a changeling…_ "…just please… let us go… Sandy sounds hurt..." _which by the way… how come you have a human daughter? Or is SHE the changeling?_ he wondered remembering some of the lore and legends. "…I mean really hurt… please we won't tell… not a soul!" _except my dad and he'll hunt you down and kill you!_ he tried pleading again.

Even in the darkness outside the shack he could see the careless fling of Mr. Harris' right arm and though he couldn't hear much else, he did hear a soft tumble and muffle through the leaves. A faint whimper was swallowed by the darkness and his heart leapt hopefully in his chest as Mr. Harris' face disappeared from the window and heavy lumbering footfalls vibrated through the ground.

_Is it my imagination or is he looking a little more…storybook Ogre?_ Dean wondered then shook his head, people didn't just transform in front of other people, they didn't… but then again… there was a reason these creatures remained in the social subconscious.

Dean took advantage of the moment, trying to test how much slack he'd been given this time, and to test the strength of the rope. He realized that despite the rings of fire searing into his wrists, the slack he'd been able to afford himself while cramped in the cage was still his, and the first faint glimmer of hope in what seemed forever pierced the veil of his fear.

He turned so he was facing the door when Mr. Harris came pounding in, dragging Sandy by the hair. Even from across the room he could tell her struggles had ceased. She posed no resistance as he flung her into the room straight at Dean who was knocked hard onto his back with the impact. As he struggled to right himself he caught sight of Sandy's glazed blue eyes. She barely seemed to recognize him and he felt his heart leap again when he saw a line of blood start to flow out of her mouth. Her breathing was shallow and rapid and her face was pale and oily. _Oh God… he killed her…she's gonna die if I can't get us out of this…I mean she's REALLY gonna die! Oh man…_he looked up into those deep set dark eyes of the monster that was his captor and a look of certainty passed between them. Human to creature, each saw death in the others' eyes but the ogre before him had the upper hand, strength and freedom of mobility were its allies, Dean could only hope, ironically, that as it regressed to its natural state, that it continued to enjoy their torment, at least until he could get his thumb out from under this god-forsaken knot and free his hands. His stainless steel blade was a beacon of hope shining on the mantle above the stove, now all he had to do was get to it.

Even as the creature that Mr. Harris was de-evolving into grasped the center line of the rope that bound Dean's hands to his backward bent feet, and picked him up off the floor; his arms bowing backwards, tension straining the muscles and tendons of his shoulders, a spire of glee shot through him just before the knot tightened once more, this time around the palm of his hand. His thumb was free at last.

Dean cast a glance to his friend who lay unconscious on the dirt floor of the shack, her chest barely rising as blood continued to trickle out of her mouth. _I guess it's my turn to wash for dinner?_ he acknowledged as Harris the Ogre carried him outside and around to a rain barrel. He drew in as deep a breath as possible and felt a moment of sob-worthy relief from the burning of his skin as he was plunged head first into the cold water. In just another moment, as the pressure holding him down failed to abate, he would begin to panic.

--

tbc.

Please R&R… it keeps me going y'know?

Thanks.

sifi


	6. Chapter 6

Their Own Devices – chpt 6

by: sifi

--

Sam fished his mini-mag-lite from his pocket and shone it on the ground as he ran through the trees. He stayed close to the road until he reached the dead end Sarah had told him about. He heard her call after him, and his ears reddened with her curses of frustration and uncertainty and though he felt bad for her, he was also grateful to her for having brought him this far. _It's okay… you can go back now…_he thought and slowed when he spied the parking lot that was the end of All Seasons Road.

Sam cast his glance around, sweeping the widened beam of his light over the tree line, looking for the path the hunters traversed. The moon was only a quarter full but the sky was largely clear wisped with tendrils of pale gray that did nothing to hinder the young boy's progress. A small break and a trodden patch of ground called to him. He lurched toward the opening but stopped and pulled his compass out of his pocket. He shone his light on it to make sure the path led in the right direction. A broad dimpled smile spread across his face and with a 'whoop' and a skip he took off into the gap, _I'm coming ya big boogerhead!... just be okay… kay… please... _

As he followed the compass point into the woods the idea that he might be wrong, or that his brother could be somewhere else never crossed his mind. Focused in a way he'd never felt before Sam dove fearlessly into the shadows.

--

Dean sputtered gasping for air while fireworks exploded in his eyes. He almost hadn't made it that time. With each dunking the water pressed more insistently against his heat-blistered lips, and every time he parted them to gasp in that sweet breath he felt the deep sting of his flesh tearing. He felt as if he'd face planted into a cactus and as his head was forced down into the barrel yet again, the next gasp was from the piercing new wave of needle stings. He struggled against the giant stony mitt pressing into his back, each effort at resistance less than the one before until he had nothing left.

His torso folded in half and the toes of his shoes slid down the slick wood, no longer able to find purchase. Bubbles ruptured the stilling surface of the water and Dean let go.

--

Inside the shack Sandy Harris opened her eyes and recalled the nightmare surrounding her. She remembered Dean Stuart and how he'd tried to help her, how he'd tried to do what she lacked the courage to do and find someone to help, she remembered how she'd said cruel things that put hurt into his kind green eyes. She could still feel the tines of the fork pressing into her side at the dinner table as her dad paced behind her and told her what to write in the note that would bring the meddlesome boy to the barn.

She hadn't dared to lift her eyes, not with her mother and big brother there. Davey would've gladly tossed her on the floor and tenderized her with that fork in his hand if dad told him to, and Mom would've just leaned back against the counter with her arms crossed over her chest. She would've shaken her head while watching the pricks of blood stain her clothes four at a time. She probably even would have made her wash the stains out with bleach or alcohol or something before she let her clean herself up. The look on her face would say, 'you asked for it….' and the cruel laughter that would chase her up into her bedroom once the tears started coming would echo in her head all through the night. That was the way it always was when she cried, or at least when they knew she was crying.

Somehow tonight though Sandy didn't think there would be many more instances when that laughter would torment her. She wasn't sure that there would be a tomorrow at all, not for her or for her kind but unfortunate new friend Dean.

As she rolled herself onto her stomach and scratched her fingertips into the hard packed earth of the shack floor, she remembered hearing all the rumors about what had happened to that other little boy, the Schmidt boy, she couldn't remember his first name, but that wasn't the point. The point was that she knew what people had said about what happened to him, and though she'd firmly and constantly denied and tried to refute the story, way down deep inside a part of her had wondered. It was no surprise that for as long as that particular batch of "ham" and vegetable soup had lasted she'd stuck with more than her fair share of peanut butter and jelly, or bologna sandwiches.

There was a faint gleam she could see on the shelf above the stove, a gleam she knew belonged to the edge of Dean's knife. Her dad didn't like the thing, he'd seemed to be appalled by it when he'd found it in the boy's jeans pocket and she'd dared a glimpse of his face when he'd pressed that steel edge to the spot between Dean's eyes, he'd been cringing and anything that could make her dad cringe had to be a good thing for her, and her friend. Now, all she had to do was get to it, hide it from him, and somehow get the upper hand over a man that was starting to look very strange, and not like the man she recognized as her father.

Depending on which way she looked at it, Sandy was well versed enough in the taste and texture of her own blood that as it ran out of her mouth and nose while she crawled the miles and miles of feet to the stove she could both successfully block the urge to throw up, and managed to hold deep inside the grunts and cries of pain she could never recall feeling free to unleash. She couldn't tell if the sound she was hearing was Dean fighting the water in the barrel or the rush of blood in her ears but either way, the sound was slowing and she really needed to get her hands on that knife. _Dean fake it or he'll kill you! Please have enough sense to fake it, drowning, passing out, whatever, but don't waste your energy struggling okay? I'm sorry I got you into this… I'm sorry I wrote the note Dean… I'm so sorry you came to my school… and my town... please don't die…_ she realized she was standing, well, leaning heavily against the warm stone stove. Her hand reached for the knife while she looked over her shoulder at the small window and saw the expression on her fathers' face.

He was intent on holding the boy down into the barrel, his lower teeth jutting out over his top teeth, but both sets were bared. From the angle and the play of shadows and light on his skull, his brow ridges appeared thicker and heavier than usual. His cheekbones seemed also to have thickened and begun to jut forth, perhaps to balance the extension of the lower jaw. A shiver shook her as her hand closed silently on the knife. She'd seen ceatures like his before and the crazy notion that he might not be a human being buzzed her brain. _He looks like a really mad baboon from one of those safari shows…_but there was something else in the look of him at that moment.

Something she had no word for; even in her fairly savvy, twelve year old vocabulary, seemed to dance beneath the surface of his skin. Yes, because of his bone structure and the shadows that were cast over it he looked angry, but that look that she'd been trying to define for the majority of her rational life, that look of sheer pleasure, satisfaction, power crazy madness… whatever it was…made her skin start to crawl like it never had before and in that moment she understood something she'd only seen as the tip of the iceberg before. In that moment, she became fully aware and comprehending of the idea of finality.

--

He felt the stony fingers graze his back through his shirt and hoist him out of the barrel. Every bit of concentration and will he possessed was aimed at keeping his body as lax as possible. Buying a reprieve by feigning unconsciousness, at this particular moment seemed to be the only thing that might save his life.

He felt himself flung through the air and fought his natural response with everything he had, keeping himself loose as he impacted with the ground and slid several feet toward the tree line. The ground vibrated and that gurgling guttural laugh dribbled through the air as the thing that had once been something resembling a man lumbered toward him. If he'd been on his own Dean would have taken that moment to spring to his feet, shimmy out of the rope and take off through the woods, simply hoping he was headed in the direction of town. He didn't know where his pack was, whether it was in the car or the barn, but he hadn't seen it in the shack. No pack, no compass, just his innate sense of direction. But there was more than himself to think about. He had to help Sandy, she was much worse off than he was and if he left her behind, if he couldn't find some way to save her, then everything he'd gone through would've been for nothing, _but first I gotta get out of the damned rope!_

He kept his eyes closed and tried to keep his face blank even though every step the Harris Ogre took toward him made his teeth rattle. From the direction of the vibration Dean knew the man/creature was in front of him and slowly, gingerly started working the rope loose from around his palm thereby freeing his right hand. He wasn't sure what he'd be able to accomplish with only one hand free that much depended on the amount of time he had to get it off his left hand.

Fortune smiled on Dean in that moment. He found the slip side of the knot and felt a series of loops unravel from his wrist. His eyes popped open and he rolled himself furiously away from the new almost definitely lumbering creature.

_Okay… note to self… just 'cause it lumbers doesn't mean it isn't fast!_ he realized as he felt himself getting tangled by the undergrowth at the edge of the woods.

"Think you're funny little mouse?... I'm gonna squash you when I catch you!" he yelled.

Dean changed direction abruptly, flinging himself as hard as he could into the Harris Ogre's shins. Air rushed out him as the brute stumbled, catching his foot under Dean's body. It wasn't the fall he'd hoped for but it gave him just enough opportunity to free himself entirely and get to his feet.

He'd only managed a couple of fleet-footed steps back toward the shack; his head swimming with the effects of the trials he'd already suffered when he felt that steely grip close around the collar of his jacket driving his feet out from under him.

This time though, he wasn't bound and despite the pounding in his head and numbness in his feet, Dean turned out of that vise-like grip and charged forward, his whole being focused on assaulting every potentially vulnerable spot the ogre might have. He went in for the eyes at the same time his foot slammed upward between its legs. He smiled, energized by the bark of pain that threatened to cleave his skull in two. As the Harris ogre doubled over clutching its crotch in one hand and reaching for his face with the other, the elder Winchester grabbed its ears and yanked with all of his body weight on its head, slamming the jutting chin into his knee. It turned out to be the wrong move.

A rocket of hot blazed up his thigh at the same time his lower leg went numb, folding beneath him.

"Dean…" somehow he heard that raspy struggling voice say his name despite the fact that he was nearly choking on his heartbeat.

A triumphant call pierced his aching head and for a split second that was bound to cost him everything, Dean felt that hand close on his jacket and he felt himself hoisted into the air. When he looked down into the victorious leer of the ogre before him, and out of the corner of his eye watched a stumbling blonde figure slip from the shack, into the shadows and disappear, something inside Dean gave up.

--

"Dean…" Sandy whispered feeling tears on her face as she saw his body sag in her dad's grip. She caught a glimpse of his face and the resignation there and understood more than he would ever know. _It's my turn now… I have to be brave for Dean…he tried so hard to help… I have to try too…_ but after twelve years of trials and abuses Sandy knew her body well enough to know that something more than just a few ribs were broken. She'd felt them bend and finally crack like wet, green wood but this time the blood wouldn't stop coming up, and she felt like there was some kind of stuffing inside her keeping her from being able to fill her right lung with air. She knew she needed help, if not for herself then she had to be brave enough to get it for Dean. She had to be brave enough to have faith in him.

While the thing that was certainly no longer her father was pre-occupied, she crept out the door, trying to catch Dean's eye, trying to make him somehow, _know_ that she was going for help and wasn't leaving him. Nothing was going to stop her from returning with a whole police force if that's what it took, she could get some rest when she rescued Dean.

What she really wanted to do was to stab the blade she'd tucked next to the hearth right into that big jiggly butt over and over while he squealed and chased her around, and if she could breathe properly, and if there wasn't the feeling of Davey using her as his own personal Hoppity Horse, she might've done just that. _Yeah… and if wishes were fishes no one would ever go hungry again…_she thought. She was hoping that whatever was still in store for her friend that he would be able to find the knife and have more will and ability to use it than she did. _I'll be back Dean… I promise I won't leave you…_ she sniffed and crept into the shadows.

--

Sam stopped and cocked his head to the side, he wasn't sure but he thought he heard something, something that didn't necessarily sound like it only had two legs. _I wonder what would be safer out here? An animal or an ogre? _he thought trying not to laugh at his own joke, he wasn't sure what kind of sound would come out and if there was fear in it, he might fail. In his mind's eye he could see his closet door start to swing open slowly, he could even hear it creak and he shuddered, _Okay… at least whatever it is out here, at least it's not the thing in my closet! Why doesn't dad hunt THAT down?_ he wondered.

Sam held his compass up to the slant of moonlight forcing his eyes to focus and make out the details, _she said it was only a couple miles in… I must've gone almost the whole way by now!_ he smiled.

Lifting his shirt he pressed a button on something on his belt and read the numbers. _Wow! 9924 steps! that's gotta be a couple miles! _he nodded and chewed on his lower lip while he thought hard, _It measures in feet.. so…Man! Dean you booger! I HATE math! Okay…_ he drew his numbers in the air and frowned, _That's not even a whole mile for me! Dean you are sooooo going to owe me BIG for this… Dad's gonna be soooo mad at you…_ he felt something wiggle in his belly and frowned for a moment, _Maybe I should have called Pastor Jim…_ then shook his head, _Nah… he couldn't have done anything… he's not here…_ he knew Pastor Jim would have told him to stay at the apartment and keep the doors locked and just wait, and he knew he couldn't have done that. Dean was NEVER late, and would NEVER leave him all alone, and if Dean didn't show up by dark, and didn't call then he was in Real Bad trouble, the kind that couldn't wait for grown ups.

--

Dean awoke to darkness and something warm covering his face. He groaned and turned his head and felt something tiny and needle sharp dig into the tender burned skin of his cheek. A squeak and a furry warm "thunk" fell across his neck. Some kind of hair brushed against his face and he sputtered in the darkness trying to wipe away that silken tickle. His knuckles smacked against something hard and as whole awareness started to come to him once more, along with the dimensions of his latest prison he noticed he was far from alone. A chorus of squeaks and squeals bounced off the wooden walls keeping him prisoner and his heart leaped into his throat. The vermin raced over him, between his legs and one even started to make its way up his pant leg as he explored the narrow box he found himself in. He felt the wall with his hand, pressing against a furry body that made its displeasure known by being the first to sink its teeth into the flesh of young Dean Winchester.

--

tbc.

Please R&R…

sifi


	7. Chapter 7

Their Own Devices – chpt 7.

by: sifi

--

_Oh God… Oh God… they're all over me…Oooh… how many of them are there? Oh man please…_Dean cringed. He held his body stiff and still while he tried to count just how many rats were in the box with him. There was the one that bit him, and the one in his pant leg, at least he though there was only one. There were sets of sharp little claws working their way up his shin, each bit of progress foretold by the tickle of a whisker. He tried not to flex, he tried to keep himself calm and not kick out but once those little hand-like nails gripped the top of his knee, his leg flicked outward, resulting in a matched set of angry squeals and he couldn't tell if it was another bite or a scratch that followed. _Oh man… get outta my pants you sick little eeeeeewwww!_

He pressed his hand down on his thigh to make sure it couldn't get any further, and succeeded in mashing yet another of his fellow captives with his elbow. The creature's body gave like a full, wet sponge and this time instead of the bite he expected, the hot furry blob jumped onto his chest and waddled down his belly, over his groin and disappeared somewhere in the space between his body parts.

A gasp of disgust turned into a choked sob as he pressed his hands and feet hard to the sides and bottom of the box. The space was so tight that even for his small frame, it took some serious doing for him to move his arms so his hands were over head. With almost no leverage he did his best to push, trying to test the strength and construction of his prison.

_Please God…help me…_he thought feeling the tears falling freely along the sides of his head. The fleeting image of his little brother with his big blue-green, puppy dog eyes and those contagious dimples that could charm just about anyone into anything raced through his mind. _I might never see my brother again…I'm sorry Sam…please just don't forget me okay? and don't let dad either…okay… please…love you Sammy…_

"Eww…" he moaned shaking his head from side to side as a few of his companions sensed the fluid and started licking it from his temples, their teeth only grazing his blistered and stinging skin for the moment. He knew they'd start biting soon enough. "Please…" he whispered and pounded his clenched fist against the wood.

"Please let me out!" he yelled feeling his heart swell with panic. It wasn't so much the tight space that was getting to him, he'd been taught to hold his position in occasionally very confined spaces, but it was the dark, and the not knowing what was happening outside of the box, whether he was alone or if the ogre was watching and laughing, and it was the rats that would eventually start to gnaw on him, first through his clothes and then through him. Yeah. Mostly it was the rats.

He felt warm heat against his shin and grimaced, _that little son of a bitch just peed on me! Eeew…rat pee… _"Mr. Harris! Please… someone! Anyone let me out of here! Please!" he called caving in and kicking in time with his pounding. There was no response that he could hear, no mocking laughter, no taunting, as far as he knew, he could have been dropped in the middle of nowhere or down a mineshaft to China.

_Please… someone help me…_ his narrow chest hitched and his breath caught in his throat as he laid his arm over his eyes and cried.

--

_What is that?_ Sam wondered while he crept closer to what sounded like Daffy Duck with laryngitis coughing up a tin can full of pebbles.

His eyes were long since fully adjusted to the darkness of the woods and even from a dozen yards behind, he could tell that the kid on their knees, gasping for air, wasn't his big brother.

"Sandy?" he whispered while staying safely tucked in shadow. Sure enough that blonde head popped up and pale, frightened features scanned the area.

"Who's there?" her raspy voice quaked.

"Sandy… where's Dean?" Sam asked coming to her side and looking penetratingly through the area wondering if he was hiding somewhere, "Dean?" he asked just a little more loudly. Sandy shook her head and Sam knelt beside her with his hand on her shoulder so he could turn her to face him.

He drew back, his mouth twisted in a grimace and his eyebrows frowned, "Where's Dean!" he demanded feeling his heart start to pound while his belly began its own sick dance, "What happened?"

"He's in trouble…" she gasped nearly choking on the words as blood drew a fresh thin line down her chin.

"You left him!" he demanded feeling fury going to war against his fear, "Where is he?!" he had her by the shoulders now, his eyes so deep into hers he felt as if he was trying to pull the information from her mind.

"Needed help Sammy… my dad… he's not…" she shook her head, "…anymore…"

"I know… he's an ogre…" Sam nodded, "They EAT KIDS! You tell me where my brother is! NOW!" he insisted furiously, wanting little more than to scream at her but knowing it would be very dumb to do it. Still he hated the sound of desperation that rang in his head, but for his brother he could handle anything.

"Back there…" she motioned over her shoulder. Sam bounded to his feet and dashed forward, "Sammy… Dean's knife…he doesn't like it… it's by the stove on the floor…" her words were barely audible for her gasping and rattling breathing.

"Are you gonna be okay?" Sam asked bouncing on his feet, torn between running to his brother and making sure the reason he was in this mess at all was okay.

She nodded and reached for him, "Help me up… you can't go alone…" 

She heard him whine and watched him dance anxiously, reminding her of a puppy freshly house broken. "Sam!" she barked and coughed up a glut of blood, the bubble darkening her lips like Halloween make-up as it burst and tears rolled down her face.

"He'll kill you…" she whispered and almost seemed to breathe easier as he wrapped her arm over his shoulder and helped her to her feet.

_She's slowing me down so much… what if he already…NO! Dean wouldn't die… he can beat anyONE… well except dad but… almost! He only needs to get a little taller and a little stronger then he can… I wish I could just leave her here!_ "Why'd you leave him!" Sam demanded angrily, reminded that she'd run away to save herself, _Course she is pretty bad…_

"Needed help… I couldn't save him alone…" she sniffed wetly and started coughing again, falling to her knees, taking Sam to the ground beside her, "Oh God…" she choked.

"You're hurt bad…" Sam said softly while patting her back.

"I'm gonna die I think… but hafta help Dean… he tried to be my friend…" she fell onto all fours as blood flowed in a ribbon from her mouth to the ground making Sam's stomach turn and tears come to his eyes for her.

"Stay here… we'll come back for you… if you rest you won't die kay?" he urged and was off into the dark before she could protest.

--

"Plee hee heese…" Dean cried through the tears and dozens of gnawing pains. If there'd been anything left in his stomach he would've thrown it up at least five minutes ago when his prison started shaking.

The rats were in a frenzy as the box was rolled in broad circles on the ground, with carnival ride speed, he had his hands and feet jammed into the corners to try and keep his position relative but gravity and his long since faded strength were conspiring evilly against him. His arms and legs shook with effort and the sweat on his palms made his grip tenuous at best. His hands kept sliding and squashing into those hot, angry squalling beasts that leaped all over him, their claws sinking into his clothes and skin, trying to keep their own purchase. Every time his grip slipped, his head banged the top of the box and his elbows and knees, well every bony part of him slammed into something.

Claws and teeth likewise sunk into him from his face to his ankles, they'd been biting for several minutes. Their screams added to his were a shriek that had him verging on blind panic and yet somehow through all the noise inside his head and out, he could hear rumbling laughter.

_Please God… I'm sorry… Stop it!_ "Stop it!" he screamed, his feet flailing back and forth while his hands tried to find the corners above his head again. A cold hairless tail fell into his mouth while sharp little fingernails clutched at his ear and dug into his cheek. He bit down reflexively and felt teeth chomp his upper lip even as he spit the wretched thing out of his mouth.

"Nnnmmaagh!" he sobbed grabbing the furry water balloon-like body in his hand and threw it to the foot of the box, but it was far from the end. It screamed enraged, and he had the crazy notion that there would be retaliation. _Somebody help me…I want my dad and Sam…_ His chest hitched, his eyes burned and he tasted his own blood on his tongue as a cascade of sobs he'd been trying so hard to hold back, broke free and ran, taking him along for fun. He felt teeth at his ear, and more biting deep and cruel into the meat of his calf. These were no longer nips of warning, these were angry, vicious and frightened bites meant to do damage, not just warn.

The rope that Harris had tied to the handle of the gun trunk slipped from his hands sending it rolling end over end for the momentum he'd worked up.

A gleefully nightmarish smile pulled across his mouth and he 'whooped' then doubled over, clutching his belly with laughter, watching it tumble, bathing in the muffled but deliciously salty cries of the child inside, or was it the rats? Either way, it didn't matter to him, something screaming was fun.

--

Dean felt popping in several of his joints as he tumbled head over heels inside his unbreakable prison _I'm gonna die, oh God I'm gonna die and nobody's gonna know, and Sammy's gonna be alone… dad'll leave him alone…Maybe Pastor Jim'll look after him when dad hunts…he'll be fine with Jim and maybe he can do a whole year in one place… make some friends… oh God Sammy I'm sorry… Dad… I'm sorry please help me! please just KNOW I need you… please…well… at least Sandy got away… so that's something right? I maybe saved her life so that's…_he couldn't let himself finish the thought, the pain and fear was too deep, it was cutting him in time with the claw-needles and sick pawing that made his skin crawl as they tried to scratch their way out of the box, a few of them through him. A few, he was certain… just chewing on him because maybe… they liked the way he tasted.

The box came to rest and Dean was face down, a dozen squirming vermin bodies squished beneath him, wiggling and writhing to get out from under him, pinch after pinch tearing at his belly and anything else they could sink their teeth into. He lifted himself up as much as he could till they could get out from under him. His arms were trembling and as the last body slid from beneath him then clawed its way up his back where to his pure disgust it simply sat, he collapsed onto his front, buried his face into his forearms and lay there trembling. He couldn't move, struggle, fight, cry, yell, scream or plead. He was spent and terrified, wondering what was going to come next. How much more would he be able to bear?

--

_Well THAT can't be good…_Sam frowned once he was able to identify some of the sounds hitting his ears. There was laughter, cruel taunting laughter, the kind of sound that the bullies made when they shoved some kid into the dumpster, he knew because once in a while it was him. Then when Dean found out it was _his _turn to laugh a bit. The other sound was similar to the time his dad had dropped an old green cooler right off Pastor Jim's porch, only this time it sounded like there was something tumbling around inside.

He felt a shiver pour over him and he tightened his jacket against it when he noticed a third sound that made him want to… do… something! He wasn't really sure just what it was, mostly because it was something he almost NEVER remembered having heard before, not like this anyway. Whatever it was, it made his eyes water and he didn't like that one bit.

He crept through the brush keeping within the shadow of a tree near the clearing's edge and watched the ogre swinging a rope round and round in a circle, at the end of the rope was a gun box like Bobby had in the back of his truck. It was tied at one end and rolling round and round on the ground as the ogre laughed. He watched the rope slip from the ogre's hands and the box tumbled end over end toward the tree line just off to his right.

He watched the thing that used to appear as a man clutch its sides laughing then take several long strides toward the box, approaching as if it were a ball, _Ooh that's gonna hurt!_ Sam thought as the foot connected with the box and to his amazement the ogre didn't howl in pain. Instead the chest rolled several feet again and even in the scant light Sam could see a huge dent in the side where its foot had impacted.

_Dean… please be alive… please be alive… please be alive… _Sam chanted as he dodged from shadow to shadow toward the door of the shack, taking advantage of the moment that the ogre was so giddily preoccupied to find either his brother or the knife Sandy had hidden. _Two's better than one… _he nodded to himself.

--

Just before the impact happened that sent his little world rolling again the elder Winchester brother found himself tensing up, he knew something was coming. The 'Thud" thundered in his ears in the confined space and against his side the old worn wood plank V'd inward, at just the wrong time. He felt wet heat against his rib cage and furious frenetic squirming as one of his reluctant companions found itself impaled on a shank of wood, pinned to his flesh but not dead yet. The creature might possibly have been made mad by pain, Dean knew as its teeth started gnawing into him that he would be mad soon too.

Another 'Thud" in the same spot and the plank shattered, tearing the rat wide open and shearing one end into his side and the other digging into his ribs where his own blood started to flow all the more freely.

He heard something change in the confines of his prison and in a moment he was stunningly grateful to his furred cell mates as they squeezed out and fresh air rushed in. Dean pushed, and pushed again summoning everything he might have left, _Come on Dean… just a little more! _he coaxed himself and wept when the lock popped and the deep back of the box flipped off, leaving him laying beneath the night sky.

He shuddered and choked back a sob of relief as he rolled into the dirt, looking for the ogre. With the light from the shack behind it, he wasn't sure exactly what the ogre was doing, but with one word in an unmistakable voice, from that same direction his blood froze and his heart literally stopped for several beats. _Oh God…not Sammy…._

--

tbc.

Please R&R… tears, fears whatever's running through your head… please I'd love to know.

Thanks sifi


	8. Chapter 8

Their Own Devices – chpt 8.

by: sifi.

--

"…ammy…" he choked feeling thunderstruck.

"Ha ha… see little mouse… more for the pot! Makes up for you making me lose Sandy… huh… least my family's gonna eat… and we're gonna eat your family!" he sneered laughing while moving closer, holding the youngest Winchester up by the back of his jacket.

Sam's feet and arms were flailing madly but with the reach on the ogre, he wasn't hitting anything of consequence.

"Dean… you look…bad…" Sam whimpered watching his big brother collapse face down to the ground. "You hurt my brother you big stupidhead! I'm gonna…"

"What?..." Harris the ogre shook him back and forth, "What're you gonna do little man? You gonna whine me to death?" he taunted.

"I'm gonna do… _something!_" Sam promised watching his big brother's expression go from one of pure horror to one that was suddenly questioning his sanity. That look was just what Sam was hoping for, it meant that the Dean he _knew_ was somewhere inside that torn up and broken looking kid he _didn't_ know. His Brother was in there somewhere and was on his way to the rescue. He didn't care that the ogre was laughing thunderously at his expense, what mattered was that Dean was finally almost on his feet.

With a deep dimpled grin Sam met Dean's eyes. A second later, with the reflexes of a child, his hand slid from his pocket and his wrist flicked a flash of stainless steel to the ground inches from the toe of Dean's sneaker.

A sly knowing smile slid across the eldest Winchester boy's face as he ducked down and grabbed his blade from the ground at the same time Sam's other hand flashed from his other jacket pocket, and with a deft and oft practiced motion he drew his own spring-loaded edge across the back of the ogre's hand.

If there'd been any doubts as to whether Harris was a man or ogre, the next few seconds put them solidly to rest. His howl rent the night and Sam was dropped to the ground. The young boy dropped to a crouch, then popped up and turned, in a flash he dared his meanest, hardest, game-winning kick right into the big meanie's shin before dashing to Dean's side and colliding clumsily into him.

"Easy there tiger…" _God it's good to see you! _Dean grinned wrapping his arm around his baby brother's shoulders, "Good job runt! Really good job!" he praised while they watched, mesmerized as the flesh of the ogre's hand began to blacken and peel away from the bones.

"Eeeeww…" Sam grimaced then actually took a good look at his brother and leaned back, "…Jeez! what did he _do_ to you?" he asked.

"You know Hansel and Gretel?" he asked.

"Yeah…" Sam frowned but nodded. It took a moment for the implication to sink in but when it did Sam's eyes popped wide, "Eeeeww! He tried to _cook _you?"

Dean nodded.

"In there?"

Another nod.

"Gross," Sam's eyes were fixed narrowly on the Harris ogre as it howled and screamed while its hand died and peeled apart in charred looking leafy bits.

Again, nod.

"Dean?"

"Yeah Sam?" he asked guiding his little brother toward the car where hopefully his pack would be in the trunk.

"You need to stay away from girls, they're trouble."

"You were worried about me," Dean smiled reaching across the front seat for the button in the glove box that would open the trunk.

"Nuh uh…" Sam shook his head.

"Yes you were," the trunk popped open and Dean smiled walking around his little brother who stood defiantly with his arms crossed over his chest and shaking his head.

"Was NOT! I just didn't want you to get in trouble is all…"

"Yeah alright…" Dean grinned turning his face away. He didn't want to scare Sam. He didn't want his little brother to know just how little hope he'd had that he'd ever see him again, and most importantly, he didn't want Sam to know just how scared he'd really been.

"Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"You're okay right?... cause you look kinda… bad…"

Dean hung his head smiling as he reached deep into the trunk, he heard a shuffle and a wicked 'thudhump' and the sound of skidding, and even as he moved to check on Sam, that big stony mitt pushed him down hard, trying to fold him in half again, this time using the trunk edge instead of the rain barrel.

The air 'wooshed' from him and he kicked back as hard as he could, shooting for a knee or the groin or something. The ogre barked in pain but instead of releasing him as he'd hoped it would, it grasped him once more by the scruff of the neck, pulled him from the trunk and held him up with his good hand.

Scanning the area Dean could see Sammy out cold at the base of a tree, the ichor covered blade still managed to gleam in the moonlight and Dean still held hope. All he had to do was pull his own knife.

His hands fumbled in his pocket while in the shadows of the trees Sandy stumbled closer, she needed to get to Sam's knife, and to check and see if the kid was alright. It wouldn't do to let him die just cause she couldn't help.

A bob of blonde caught his attention and Dean finally got his blade out in the open and open in his hand. He watched Sandy's hand snake out through the brush and get hold of Sammy's knife.

"Play time's over little mouse… I'm mad and I'm hungry… that's bad for you and baby brother…" it threatened just as Dean pressed the point of his knife into the ogre's forearm, between the two bones there, then leaned on it, doing his best to either cut through the smaller one or to break its connection to the larger one.

"Why won't you just die!" he cried feeling his head start to rattle again as the creatures scream made his skull vibrate and sent a stab through his ear.

Dean felt a rush of warm, similar to when Sam climbed into bed with him on a stormy night and propped his head against the back of Dean's. His warm breath tickled his ear and neck for the first few minutes but after that, when he got used to it, and the interminable wave of heat Sam's little body generated behind him Dean never slept so well.

The only problem was that this particular rush of warmth, while accompanied by a rush of warm _air_, was actually moist and followed by a blast of cold that made his eyes burn from the inside. He winced as a blast of static like a blown speaker erupted into his head and sound ceased to exist on that side of his head. His eyes rolled into his head and seemed to cross a bit of their own accord while pressure seemed to wax and wane on the right side of his head, _What?... that's no ordinary pop… wow I think I'm deaf now… you Ass Hole! I am soooo gonna kill you! _

Unfortunately the ogre once again had the upper hand, and apparently the same idea.

--

Sandy's eyes crossed and fogged and she shook her head trying to clear it. Sam was alive, she saw his chest rising while he breathed. Her father's scream sent waves of pain through her head and she ducked down, clutching her hands to her ears while the trees shook and leaves fell around her.

She knew time was short as the creature that was her father swung his toy hard enough to get a grip on his feet with what was left of the two spiny tines of his decayed off hand and he looked like he was going to throw him, hard.

At that in-and-yet-somehow-opportune moment Sammy moaned and shook his head, coming around quickly and while assessing his situation saw Sandy who motioned him to shush, but it was too late. The ogre had seen him move and heard him moan and was charging toward the little boy with his big brother captive over head.

--

He stopped before Sam, it cocked its head to the side, its deep dark eyes meeting the glassy plea in the little boy's, and the left side of its mouth twitched and twisted.

"Heh," it barked and in a single motion dropped Dean's dizzied and squirming body.

Sam felt his mouth drop open, he saw Sandy burst out of trees with his knife in her hand and run toward the ogre, he saw the look on Dean's face and the fresh streak of blood that was running from his ear, and he saw the ogre's foot swing back, then forward with the same intention it had used on the gun trunk. Sam's world went silent except for the sound of air and a sickening squish of flesh being crushed as Dean's body cleared his head by scant centimeters and slid to a stop on the ground further than the front end of the Harris family car.

"Dean!" he yelled turning on his knees as Sandy's head popped over Harris's shoulder and the knife blade gleamed an instant before he ran to his brother.

_Oh God please don't be dead, please don't be dead, please don't be dead… come on Dean… come on! You can't be dead! _he slid on his knees to his brother, uncertain what to do for the longest time.

"Dean?" he whispered oblivious to the rivers striping his face. He reached out his hand, slid his cold and sweat damp fingers to the front of his brothers' neck and waited. When he was sure he was feeling the vibration from Dean and not from his own fear his breath burst from his lungs and he sniffled, heedless of the cacophony that was going on in the clearing. Nothing else mattered but his brother!

"Dean… come on… you gotta wake up… come on… wake up… okay? Please?" that last came out as a whisper and he pressed his lips hard together to keep them from shaking, and to keep his crying inside.

He looked over his shoulder just in time to see Sandy flying through the air. Her body folded around a tree then rolled down the trunk into the undergrowth. The ogre was nowhere to be seen, but snapping and rustling flora marked its passage and his howls of agonized rage spooled quickly out of earshot.

"Dean?" Sam choked barely daring to try and shake his inert brother, "Sandy?" he called over his shoulder, just a bit more loudly. His fingers never broke contact with Dean's neck.

All around him the forest fell silent while his heartbeat became a lonely rhythm in his ears. A tight grunt from the back of his throat drew into a strangled whine of uncertainty that he didn't hear.

On his knees he was torn between Sandy who he knew was in very bad shape to begin with and Dean who wasn't even moaning.

"I need help!... please… Come on Dean! Sandy needs help…" he tried to coax but his brother didn't move, "Plee… ease…" when the word that rarely failed, broke in half, Sam knew he was, at least for the time being, on his own.

He leapt to his feet, that desperate keening still in his throat as he ran across the clearing to Sandy. He pulled and pushed and rolled her onto her back then pressed his fingers to her throat. To his sharpest relief her eyes opened and she took his hand as blood ran across her cheek and into her ear, her mouth worked to form a single question, "Where?"

Sam shook his head, tears falling liberally as his fears gained a foothold in his awareness, "He ran away… we need help Sandy… I can't wake up Dean… and you're… really bad…:" his breath hitched and his head turned while his eyes bugged wide. He registered the grunt and was in motion before he consciously knew what happened.

"Dean!" he cried sniffling through another avalanche of tears, these flowing joyfully.

Dean struggled to his side then onto his hands and knees, his breath short, hard and fast. His stomach clenched and his back bowed upward as he coughed his own string of bright red blood.

"Dean?" Sam asked softly, his hand hovering over his big brother's back, the fear was making a swift return. People weren't supposed to cough up blood, it meant that something deep inside was broken, a lot. At least that's what Dean had explained when their dad had done it not so long ago. Sam remembered, John hadn't been right for weeks after that.

"Help me Sam…" Dean whispered and leaned against his surprisingly strong warmth.

" 'Kay…" Sam nodded choking back his tears, just glad beyond measure that there was life in his brother.

"Dean?" he nearly whispered.

"Yeah?" the older brother gasped and stumbled.

Sam raced around to his front and caught him against his small but sturdy body, "I gotcha Dean… I gotcha…"

"…anks runt…" Dean breathed wrapping his arms around Sam's shoulders while pressing his face to the crook of his neck as a couple fearful sobs ripped from him before he regained control over himself and choked them back down. "Thought I'd never see you again Sammy…" it was on the tip of his tongue to add, 'don't you or dad forget me…' but he didn't want to scare his little brother. It was going to be scary enough to watch him die, _Gotta send him for help before that happens… can't let that be the last of me he sees…_

He felt the breeze of Sam saying something in his ear, his now deaf ear, and realized that was the smallest of his problems. His belly clenched and another bloody cough burst out as he reflexively pulled Sam into him.

"…let's go…" he choked leaning and lurching toward Sandy with Sam as his crutch. His jaw was clenched and his teeth were aching because of it. When the Harris/ogre's shoe hit him, he felt something deep inside his lower belly, 'pop' and the ribs he'd known were fractured against the frame of the car's trunk were fully broken now, hence the blood he was coughing up, Dean was in bad shape and knew it. To his own surprise it was less the broken ribs that were screaming and threatening him with madness with every gasping breath he took, than it was the sense of something very wrong and possibly flooding something important deep inside of him. He was hot and cold alternately, sweating and shivering and he knew a fever was coming. He also knew Sam would never be able to carry him to the road then do the same with Sandy. If it came down to a choice… he'd make Sam promise to get Sandy the help she needed, she didn't have a Pastor Jim or Caleb, or Shep, or Joshua that could take care of her. Sam did.

--

"No! NO! NOOOOO! Dean!" Sam yelled as Dean slid from his grip to the floor of the woods, Sandy only a few feet behind him, "HELP me!" he yelled breathing in the salt of his tears.

He lowered his big brother as gently as he could to the ground, the water of his eyes washing the grime of exertion from his face as he looked helplessly around the darkened and largely silent woods.

"Someone…" he sniffed, his small warm hands stroking away the sweat and hair from his brothers face, running gently over his closed eyes. He choked hard on a sob and almost gagged, tears ran down his face and his throat and he bit his bottom lip trying to keep it from trembling.

Clutching Dean's head to his chest and rocking as the sobs tore through him, leaving him desperately alone and helpless in the dark, Sammy cried, "SOMEBODY HELP ME!"

--

tbc.

please R&R… what are you thinking? DO you feel for Sammy? Dean? Sandy?

Do you hurt for them?

Please.

sifi.


	9. Chapter 9

Their Own Devices – chpt 9. by: sifi. 

--

Sam cast his face to the sky, they hadn't made it more than a couple hundred yards from the clearing by the shack before Dean collapsed, bringing his world crashing down around them all.

Everything he knew that was good in life was dying in his lap and he couldn't bear to leave and try to run for help. He leaned forward, pressing his forehead to Dean's, his small hands on either side of big brother's cold waxy face while oceans of fear and desperation slid from his eyes into Dean's hair. No God… please! Not Dean… please not Dean… take Sandy… I don't care… just leave my brother alone… please don't take him, don't leave me alone…

Once more he turned his face to the quarter moon in the late night sky and screamed as hard as he could, till he choked with the effort and his voice felt ripped from his throat, willing someone to hear him, "SOMBODY HELP ME!... please…" he whispered the last, waiting, hoping, watching for some kind of miracle.

His throat closed and he gagged on the dryness inside while his body vibrated his heartbeat. "Dean… don't leave me… kay? I need you? Who's gonna make the pskettio's? Dad can't even make toast right!... I don't want you to go Dean… stay with me… please don't… die… don't leave me…" sobs sliced through his words leaving his pleas shredded bits of breeze in the night as he slid his arms up under his brother and tried to pull him up. Maybe if he's up he'll wake up…someone help me… God help me… Pastor Jim says God helps people who do for themselves… come on Dean get up… get up for yourself okay? he pulled and tugged, crouched low on his heels, Dean's back to his front as he locked his arms around his barely breathing but jaggedly broken chest and tried to lift him to his feet.

"Some…body… plee, hee, heese… some body help me… my brother's… he's… why isn't there anybody here? AnyBODY!…" he tried to hoist Dean just a little higher and firmer into his arms, but four years difference was a lot of height and weight.

Sam toppled backward, Dean's head smacking him in the mouth, knocking loose one of his bottom teeth and breaking his lower lip. Tears fairly flew from his eyes as he covered his face with his hands and sobbed helplessly.

--

Sam awoke with a start, his eyes dodging left and right, piercing every possible hidey hole in the darkness his body quickly bracing for the ogre's return. He grasped his knife and caught sight of Sandy's body just a few feet from Dean's.

_Dean! Oh no! please… still be alive_… a fresh spring of tears and sobs hitched out as he remembered just how desperate the situation was, _and I fell asleep?! How could I do that?! Now if he dies it's going to be my fault! God's going to punish me 'cause I didn't help him! Please…_ he looked up to the night sky, "Don't take it out on him! It's not his fault… it's mine… don't take him… I need him… punish me okay? Please? God? Please? Okay?... Okay…" he nodded hoping he'd been heard.

Dean's body felt warm next to his and he was still breathing no matter how much it sounded like Sheps old dog Hannibal after a few ball tosses in the yard, but Hannibal had been old … his tail thumped hard but his eyes were clouded and he limped when he walked fast, his ears perking in the direction of the thud where the ball hit the ground. By the time he got back to Sam he was rattling something fierce and usually flopped onto the ground for a restful pet before gathering his energy for another chase. Then one day Hannibal wasn't there anymore and he remembered dad's eyes filling up while he explained to Sam that sometimes, when the time was right, it was okay to die, and when that happened the people and pets they loved were able to look after them and help keep them safe.

"I need him!" he screamed choking, "It's not right! It's not right! You can't have him! I need him!" and once more he curled around his big brothers' back, his arm over his broken ribs, trying to give him what life he could through sheer will. "I won't leave you Dean… not ever… but I don't know what to do…" he cried clutching the broader chest tight, finding comfort in his big brother's presence no matter what his state may be.

"…this way…" Sam heard from a distance and quelled his wet sniffs and sobs and sat up.

"Is someone there?!" he called hugging his brother to his chest again, "Dean someone's here, someone's coming! Be okay… just keep… keep being alive… We're over here! Help! My brother needs help real bad! He's hurt… and breathing blood and so is Sandy!... Please help us!" he called trying to remember all the important information dad and Dean had drilled into him should any kind of urgent incident arise.

--

"No! No! You let me go! I have to be with Dean! Lemme go!" he screamed squirming and elbowed the policeman in the throat, making him gag and reflexively let go, "oooh sorry…" he apologized but dashed across the parking lot to the ambulance where the adults were loading Sandy inside next to his brother.

He ducked under an arm that reached for him and climbed into the vehicle, between the carts. His arm circled Dean's head and he lay his head beside his brothers, his eyes fixed on the clear green plastic of the oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. In all the time it had taken for the ambulance to get there and for the adults to get them all back through the woods Dean hadn't woken up once and neither had Sandy.

"Sam…" a soft feminine voice said from the drivers seat as a warm hand fell onto his back, "Come on Sam… you need to let the paramedics take care of your brother and Sandy okay… you can ride to the hospital with me okay? We can call your dad and I'll stay with you till he comes for you okay?"

Sam shook his head, he couldn't look at her, his eyes were too full of tears and fear, he wasn't going to leave Dean, he just wasn't, "No!... I'm not leaving my brother and you can't make me!" he mumbled tearfully while his fingers brushed through Dean's hair and kept wiping his face.

"Sam you have to…"

"NO!... there's lots of room for them to work…I'm not leaving…!"

Behind him Sarah sighed and looked over her shoulder at Sheriff Ozeman.

A solid, black haired woman with ice blue eyes sat at the rear entrance to the ambulance and met the young Winchester's gaze, "Sam… I need to ask you some questions," she said firmly and patted the ledge beside her, letting him know she wasn't going to try and get him out of the vehicle.

She smiled noting the distrust in his eyes and the skeptical look on his face, "Just sit beside me… you'll still be inside the van okay… but there's stuff we need to know…"

He drew his arm under his nose and palmed the tears from his eyes and cheeks before he kissed his brothers' temple and inched his way toward the paramedic then finally sat as far from her as he could on the step.

He cringed when the Sheriff came around and joined them but since neither adult made a move to grab him, he held his position, "I don't know everything he did…"

"That's alright… we just need to know as much as you can tell us okay?" the Sheriff smiled.

Sam nodded and started with Dean telling him that some people hit their kids.

--

"…I have to do it… I know the design…" Sam snapped angrily at the nurse who shrugged, shook her head and thought, _Where's the world heading if the kids today are like this?_ but handed him the phone anyway. He glanced down at the key pad and his fingers flew over the buttons while his eyes returned to the closed curtain of the trauma room where they had his brother and Sandy, and were doing God only knew what to them.

"Hello?" came the rich gentle voice he knew so well.

The instant he heard that voice Sam's heart leaped into his throat and his belly started to dance and everything that had been so surreal, so very this-can't-be-happening snapped into sharp relief and Sam's fear for his brother's well being grew to Jurassic proportions.

"No…" he gasped realizing that he could still lose Dean.

"Hello?" the voice was concerned now, "Sam? Sammy is that you?" he asked.

Sam nodded and swallowed hard, "…it's Dean… he… it was bad…" his feet started shifting beneath him while his heart pounded. His palms grew sweaty and the receiver started to slip, "You gotta get dad…"

"Sam? Sam… is there an adult around?" Jim asked but Sam was already handing the phone to the nurse who fumbled for it as he sprinted across the hallway and behind the trauma curtain.

Sarah barely caught a glimpse of him dashing behind the curtain but she rose quickly as a series of sharp barks came from the room where they were working on stabilizing the older Winchester. She peered around the curtain in time to see Sam stop short, his eyes bulging practically out of his head as he saw one of the medical team members cut deep into Dean's side. Blood slapped and splattered out of him onto the floor and Sam swallowed hard while watching the same person in a yellow gown start to feed a tube into a hole that shouldn't be there.

"Somebody get that kid out of here NOW!" one of the doctors called furiously. Sarah took that cue and stepped into the room. She wrapped her arms around Sam and carried him unresisting out of the bay, back into the waiting area.

"It's okay kiddo… it's okay… Dean's gonna be okay…" she soothed holding him tightly to her. His body was quaking hard enough to vibrate the chair she'd returned to while she rocked him gently and smoothed his hair. She took a look at his pale and shiny face and knew he was in shock, he was breathing normally but the tears were soaking his shirt and the little kid she knew to be a ball of fire, was otherwise unresponsive. "T'sokay sweetheart, I gotcha… it's okay…" she continued to soothe, the depth of his need drawing on every nurturing instinct she had.

A nurse came from behind the curtain and knelt in front of Sarah, she opened a warmed white blanket and helped the teen wrap the little boy into it.

"He's just in shock…" she said then turned Sam's face so she was looking into his eyes, "Your brother's going to be okay… the doctors and nurses are just trying to make it easier for him to breathe…he's going to be okay…what's his name?" she asked.

"Sam," Sarah smiled tightly.

"He's going to be okay Sam… but we need to help him right now…" she looked up at the young girl, "Are you family?"

"No… just a friend," she smiled rocking the boy in her arms, "…how bad is he?" she asked softly.

"Bad enough, second degree burns, probable concussion, multiple contusions… the worst is that he's got three broken ribs and a collapsed right lung, dozens of bites all over him… and his appendix was ruptured… as soon as he's stable… they're prepping an operating room as we speak…"

"…rats…" Sam whispered with his eyes half mast, he yawned hugely, "…it put rats in the box with him… I saw them…" he mumbled and finished his retreat into the safe oblivion of sleep.

"How about Sandy?" Sarah asked.

The nurse sighed, "Fractured pelvis, broken ribs and a collapsed lung for her too… fractured cervical vertebrae… the son of a bitch that did this to these kids deserves the chair…they're still looking for him aren't they?" she asked.

"Far as I know, Sheriff Ozeman's putting out an alert…how long till we hear something?" she asked.

"I'll let you know as soon as we know… have their parents been called?" she asked.

Sarah nodded, "He called their pastor to get in touch with the dad, he had to drive a load to Nebraska over the weekend…" she shook her head surprised that she remembered that detail, "Don't worry I'll stay with him."

The nurse smiled broadly at her, "You're very kind…"

Sarah blushed and shrugged and continued to rock Sam close to her while he tried to recover from his own exhaustion and trauma through sleep.

--

tbc Please R&R… a little slow I know… sorry… Thanks sifi


	10. Chapter 10

Their Own Devices – chpt 10.  
by: sifi 

--

"WHERE THE HELL ARE MY SONS!" the furious booming voice shook the bones of the unfortunate nurse who'd landed this shift.

"Mr. Stuart?" another nurse approached, grasping his elbow gently.

He nodded curtly.

"I'll take you to pediatrics… we'll bring you the paperwork to fill out there alright?" she nodded at the nurse at the station who put together a clipboard with the necessary forms on it.

"How are my boys?... What can you tell me?" he nearly choked on the words as she led him down the corridor.

His eyes were red and glassy, his face and hair damp with sweat and he could smell his own fear. Something had happened to his boys, something that landed his firstborn in the hospital and apparently in very bad shape.

When the nurse finished running down the list of traumas his son had suffered John leaned against the wall, his hands pressed hard and scrubbing his face, he felt dizzy and really needed to sit down, but he needed to see his boys with his own eyes even more.

"Oh God… please…" he muttered behind his hand while he collected himself just outside the door to Dean's room. "Sammy's with him?" he asked.

The nurse nodded grinning sheepishly, "Nothing and no one could tear him away… Sarah tried to bring him home with her but he wouldn't have it…" she smiled and patted the man's shoulder, "It's going to be hard to see him like that Mr. Stuart, but just remember, he's going to be fine… it's just going to take some time, and don't forget, either talk to him on the left side or straight ahead… for the time being he's not going to be able to hear very well on the right."

John nodded, took a moment to sniff back his tears, scrubbed his face briskly and forced himself to stand as straight as he could before striding into the room. His head cocked to the side and the tears threatened again as he took in the sight of his youngest curled around his big brother's unfettered left side, his arm protectively wrapped all the way over his belly and his head smashed between his arm and chest wall. Then John saw the tubes, lines, and cords that were coming from his son and felt the world tilt under his feet. He clutched at the doorjamb while the nurse zipped past him, moved the chair to the bedside and guided him into it.

He smiled gratefully, choking on his heart, his hand vibrating like a guitar string as he reached out, wanting to, but almost afraid to touch his eldest who lay sleeping through the drugs in his system.

"Oh God…" he breathed, "…my boys…" he was up in a flash, around to the far side of the bed where he sat and twisted so he lay gently across his two sons, one hand on either of them, stroking their hair while tears re-wet his face. He didn't care, these were his boys, everything in the world to him that mattered was laying here.

"No! I won't leave!" Sam tossed himself into John protesting before he could come fully awake. His eyes opened and his jaw dropped in disbelief, "Dad?!"

John pressed his lips together, unable to speak at all. He nodded and gasped when Sam's arms came tight around his neck and squeezed like there was no tomorrow. Never before had he been so grateful for a hug that choked him blue.

"They tried to make me go, and they took him away from me for a while… they had to operate… and took out his pendix, they said it popped… it was an ogre dad… it kicked him and it broke him… he was kind of okay before that but then he couldn't breathe… and he had blood coming out of his mouth like that time you did… and they wouldn't let me stay with him, but they made a hole and they said if I promised not to go on his right I could stay with him… I think Pastor Jim told them to let me stay…" he stopped and gasped for a breath then sighed such a sadly grown up sound it made John wince through his sad, shaky smile.

He watched as Sam turned toward Dean and brushed his hair off his face, "He opened his eyes once already… they said he'll wake up by tonight…"

"You did good Sammy… you did real good…" John smiled holding back his tears, this time of pride as he looked into his baby's blue-greens, "…I need you to tell me everything you know…from how this started, right up to now okay?... can you do that?" he asked.

Sam nodded and blew a shank of bang out of his eye as if relaying the story once more was such a chore, but this time he didn't have to worry about hiding the truth about Sandy's dad. This time he could tell the whole story.

--

_I'll be back as soon as I can Sammy… you keep an eye on your brother_, John thought pressing his lips to Sam's forehead before gazing at his eldest and running a hand down the dry, peeling skin of his cheek, _Dean… you just rest and heal dude… I love you son… and I promise I'm gonna get that son of a bitch…_ he leaned over and kissed the fevered face before pushing himself off the bed and walking purposefully to the nurses station.

"I'll be back shortly, Sam's with his brother… the family pastor is on his way," he informed the duty nurse and strode down the corridor before questions could be asked.

_How did you know he was an ogre?_ John heard the conversation with his youngest replay in his head, _'Sandy said he was…'_

_Did he look any different?_

Sam shook his head, _No, he just looked like a big mean, stupidhead! Dad that's not what's m'portant… he had Dean and he was hurting him! It didn't matter who he was but it's okay, he's the one who's hurt now… the steel burned him up real bad in places._

_I'm proud of you Sammy… you did real good looking after your big brother…_ he ruffled his hair and hugged him tight, his heart glowing warmly with all the love he had for both of his boys. _You don't have any reason to feel proud John… Dean's the one who inspired that kind of loyalty in Sam… NOT you… Oh God my boy could've been killed and all I can think about is hunting that son of a bitchin' thing down and killing it! It needs to be killed! That thing can NEVER be allowed to hurt another kid! NEVER!... Oh that's convenient John… that way you don't have to see the accusation in Sam's eyes huh? That, 'Why weren't you there?' look… and what about Dean? What am I going to see on his face after the smile fades and he opens his eyes for more than five minutes… what am I going to see when he remembers that I wasn't there for him? … I don't know… I just have to make sure he understands WHY… that's the important thing… that he understands WHY this is so important… yeah…_ but he didn't feel any better as he crept stealthily toward the shack. Fortunately the Sheriff's search party had fanned out from this general area and it was currently unmonitored. The litter left behind by the forensics team told John all he needed to know for the moment. They were done here, and though it was a 'crime scene' as denoted by flapping yellow plastic banners, they most likely wouldn't be back any time soon.

Now was the time to learn what he could about this creature that had dared to lay its hands on John Winchester's son.

--

Over the last eight years John's Marine training had served him well, today was no exception. Wherever he found bits of flesh, blood, tattered remnants of clothes or any indication of what his son had been put through, it was that training that kept him from falling to his knees and cursing whatever powers there might be, hadn't his family been through enough?! Hadn't they survived their fair share?

But while it would have been convenient and just a little too easy to blame everything on the demon that shattered his family's life, or on God, or whatever, he had to admit and acknowledge his own part in the creation of the present. His obsession with finding and killing his wife's murderer, his growing need to eradicate as many unnatural and evil things out there that existed, to protect those ignorant innocents… he couldn't turn his back on them, just because they didn't know what was out there didn't mean it wasn't a danger to them. He knew if he turned his back on the fight, he'd be no better than those evils.

And of course, his boys, giving them all the tools they'd ever need to fight those evils when he was no longer around to do so, to protect the people who couldn't protect themselves, and to ensure that their own families wouldn't endure the same pains his had. These were his motivators, these were his reasons for doing what he did, they were the reasons his firstborn was laying in a hospital bed unconscious, traumatized horribly and quite possibly irreparably psychologically scarred. _No… Dean is strong, he'll come out of this just fine… he's strong and…he's just a little boy…No! He's a young man now…He's MY SON… he's MY little boy…and someone hurt him… he'll be alright, he's got the strongest heart I've ever known…something hurt my son…he's my first blessing and someone hurt him…_ he shook his head forcing down all that conflict, forcing it into a place inside where it could rattle around and he wouldn't be weakened by it, a place where his love was safe and his boys were so much more than he and Mary had contributed to them, a place where he could force himself to function without those feelings of fatherly fear running the risk of tripping him up.

_Don't you worry Dean… I'm gonna kill this son of a bitch for you! He'll never hurt anyone again!_ he vowed crouching before the stove, turning a patch of dark brown dirt that told him someone had bled here.

To his far right a rank and festering stink drew his attention to a plastic mop bucket, sneering distaste he peered over the edge, the bubble of stench, having been breached by his motion poked deep into his nose, a combination of ammonia and decay. He turned his head to the side and drew in a clean breath, holding it in his lungs and mouth he looked once again and grimaced. White squirming larvae salted the largely unidentifiable glut of putrescence and not even the flies seemed inclined to leave their disgusting little hunting ground. _Are those?... Is that?..._ he wondered and looked from the four tracks he saw gouged into the slop, to his own cupped fingers, _Yeah… something or someone scooped out handfuls of that shit... was no ogre though… small hands… a child's hands…_ his heart gave a horrible squeeze while his imagination ran away with him, _Oh God my baby! What did that bastard do to you?... God help my little boy…_ he prayed for the moment forgetting that there had been a young girl, in the clutches of that same gleeful evil as his own son.

--

"Noh…nuhdunt…STOP IT!" Dean shouted gasping hard for breath. The buckles for the woolly padded restraints clanged against the frame of the bed while his hands flailed, trying to brush away those tiny gnawing teeth that were relentless in their quest for his innards.

"Dean?" Sam questioned softly while dabbing at his forehead with a cool cloth, "It's okay Dean… you're in the hospital… there's no rats here…"

His big brothers' eyes fluttered open then wafted closed before they came open again. Sam noticed Dean didn't seem to be registering his surroundings. He grabbed his big brother's face, one hand on either cheek and looked into his eyes until he felt him KNOW what he was looking at.

"No rats?" he questioned trying to look around, those buckles clanging again.

"No Dean, not here…"

"Don't be 'fraid Sammy…just don't let 'em bite you… it hurts…" Dean muttered looking around, not understanding why robots were surrounding him.

Sam shook his head while tears fell hard again from his eyes, his big brother, the one he could always count on for order and strength, the one who would never let him down was scaring him by not being able to see that he was okay now, Sam sniffed hard and shook his head, his lips no longer existent they were pressed so tightly together, "I won't..."

Dean's face crumpled and tears slid down the sides of his head, "I think…I think they're inside me Sammy… the rats got inside… don't let them inside you Sam… promise…" he mumbled reaching for Sam's head but the restraints keeping him just short.

Sam nodded and lowered his head so Dean's hand could cup his cheek. He was still sniffling back his tears and trying not to let his big brother see just how scared he was.

"…p..promise…"

He sniffed hard once more and steadied himself. He reciprocated the gesture with his own hand, "Don't worry Dean… they didn't get in you either… I'm making sure they don't… you can sleep again, I'll watch and make sure they don't get in you…"

"Really?" Dean slurred, his mouth turned up in a half smile with a spocked eyebrow to match.

"Really," Sam nodded.

"You're good brother runt… best…" he sighed then closed his eyes and let himself drift back to sleep while Sam sobbed. He was more scared now, by this altered state of mind, than he'd been in the presence of the ogre._ Hurry up dad… kill that thing and get back here, Dean needs you…well okay… I do too… so hurry._

--

tbc.  
Please R&R… am I doing the Winchester men justice? All of them? Let me know what you think okay? Please.


	11. Chapter 11

Their Own Devices – chpt 11

by: sifi.

--

The ringing in John's ears as he pushed himself to his feet served to fuel his fire, certain amounts of pain were good for combat, _reminds you what's at stake_… he thought watching for an opening or a feint from the creature before him. It ran its hand under its bleeding nose and flicked the ichor onto the ground while smiling with teeth that appeared to have been carved from yellowed wood.

_These guys are supposed to be lumbering and slow! What the hell!_ his eyes bulged as it charged him. He stepped to the side feeling the wake of wind rustle his overlong hair, his foot and hand combined to send the very large, and very frightening creature of lore to the ground, its face plowing the earth for its momentum.

John was on it in a heartbeat, the stainless steel of his bowie knife aiming for a spot between its vertebrae. _You are gonna suffer you son of a bitch! Hurt MY BOY! Gah!_ he felt himself grow primal inside.

The blade glanced through the creature's ribs, the serrated edge cutting through bone while the keen straight edge sliced into the spongy lung tissue inside. Thunder boomed from beneath him and something earthen sheared through the air. John felt pressure from behind his eyes as it howled its pain and rage. Beneath the tattered remnants of the shirt it wore John could see the flesh caving, crumbling and the scent of scorched Earth filled his nostrils.

Despite the pain it was obviously in, the ogre that had once called itself Harris rolled out from beneath him, its one good hand gripping his ankle with cutting fingers as it did so, rolling its weight over the man, its elbows striking and grinding deep his soft places.

John groaned through the stars in his eyes, his everything fell temporarily numb as impulse or blood was cut off from something vital for just a moment, _You are going to kill this thing John! For Dean! Not if it…NO excuses soldier! You WILL kill this son of a bitch! Sir Yes Sir! _he rallied himself rolling to all fours, forcing his numb limbs to work out of long habit if not actual sensory input.

He sprang, colliding shoulder to shoulder with the behemoth and felt something in his upper chest snap. His hand closed on the creature's throat, his fingers and thumb closing around its trachea, sinking into the skin, nails tearing flesh as his other hand brought his blade up between them, its carefully maintained tip sliding through the membranous gristle of the ogre's abdomen, angled upward to pierce its diaphragm, and if its anatomy was the same, the left ventricle of its sadistic heart.

The creature howled again, a sound that for any other living thing would have meant inevitable demise, but as it clutched John to itself, grinding his bones in a bear hug meant to break, he wondered if he'd just managed to make it angry.

_Get out of this John! Your boys need you!_ his inner Drill Instructor barked into his ear. His feet were off the ground and his back felt like it was splintering chalk but gasping for breath his brought his hands up, every bit of energy he could muster behind the heels of his hands as one struck high and the other low in an attempt to literally dislocate the creature's head from its spine. He felt that same rush of moist warmth followed by an icy blast at the back of his eyes, like a bad brain freeze, that his son had experienced the night before as his right ear drum split under the pressure of its fury.

He felt himself take flight as his head spun while his equilibrium was thrown off by the sudden change in pressure inside but still, he turned his head, quickly checking for whatever obstructions he might be hurtling toward while, his right hand was pulling his gun. Soft, voluminous undergrowth caught him gently, his breath held in his lungs as he sighted and fired. Ichor rained out from the retreating creature's back and it stumbled just slightly under the inertia of the consecrated iron round that lodged into the muscles between its ribs.

_Freaking brilliant John! Get your ass up! You're gonna lose it!_ he was on his feet in a flash, tearing through the underbrush, his eyes marking signs of its passage no less than ten yards ahead at every step. His legs pumped, heart thundered and his body dodged obstacles noted subconsciously. His eyes never left the prize, this was one of the reasons John had been such an exceptional soldier, and it was one of the reasons he'd become such an excellent hunter.

Unfortunately though, even an excellent hunter can be caught unawares. Even as he noticed small signs that would have been a dead giveaway under any other circumstances, signs that screamed "Caution!" "Hold It!" "Wait a sec stupid this isn't right!", soldier, hunter and father were at war within him, and as even the most green recruit knows, only a madman fights a war on four fronts.

--

"Sammy… hey Sam… look who's awake…" Pastor Jim gently shook the little boy on his right.

Even after his arrival Sam had refused to be moved from Dean's side except for the occasional bathroom break.

Sam's head popped up and he looked immediately into the wan smile of his big brother who's green eyes were struggling mightily to stay open.

"…runt… you still here?" he croaked and tried to get a grip on the mattress to push himself upright a bit. He heard the clank of the buckles and looked at his wrists, confused.

"Here Dean…" Jim leaned over and around Sam to put the straw from the bedside cup in between the boy's dry cracked lips.

"Hey whoa there… easy tiger!" Jim grinned as he felt the cup grow light with frightening speed.

"I only left to go pee I swear… I kept watch so you'd be safe…" Sam smiled while pushing his big brother's hair out of his eyes.

"…s'with the cuffs?" he mumbled trying to reach over and ruffle Sam's hair.

"You were hilerious… slapping on the tubes and wires and stuff and they didn't like it… I told them to leave you alone but they said if I wanted to stay I just better let them do what they had to so you didn't hurt yourself…" Sam explained.

Dean glanced around Sam to Jim who smiled benignly, "I think he means delirious."

"Yeah that…" Sam nodded sliding off the bed and crouching at the side of it, "You're not delir.. delirious still are you?" he asked, his eight year old eyes piercing deep into Dean's, looking for any signs of… well anything that had scared him so badly while he was muttering about the rats being inside him.

"..non't think so," Dean shook his head, "…dad come?"

Jim nodded, "He did," and gave the boy some more water.

Dean rolled his head around on his shoulders, a loose and cursory glance around the room before he cleared his throat and asked, "He went after it didn't he?" just as Sam's head popped up and the restraint dropped from his wrist.

"He did," Jim nodded.

They watched Sam walk carefully around to Dean's right side, watching every step he took for the quantity of wires, tubes, and machinery that scared him. On the floor was a box that had several canisters in it, one filled with blood, one with what looked like water and the other might have been empty. There was a tube that led from that box to the hole Sam had seen them make in Dean's chest in the trauma room. The sight of that box and the tube that ran from it scared him silly so he gave it as wide a berth as possible in that limited space while he moved to undo the other restraint. There was one tube however that when he'd initially realized what it held and, where it went to for his brother, alternately sent waves of empathetic tingling discomfort, and the occasional fit of laughter through him.

"You know how you tell me I gotta learn to hold my pee?" he grinned.

"Yeeeeaaahhh…" Dean drawled suspiciously.

Sam reached down and held up the tube filled with amber and grinned as Dean grimaced feeling a sudden pressure and horrible stinging need to go hit his bladder, "Yeah well I swear you don't stop going!"

Dean groaned and grimaced shifting uncomfortably for a moment.

"Put that down Sam… it's backwashing into his bladder…" Jim smiled patiently and shook his head as the young boy bent down, putting the tubing back on the floor.

If Sam had had a camera at that instant, as he watched the tube fill back up and dump out into a bag at the foot of the bed, he would've taken a picture of his brothers face and the look of blissful release he saw there.

"Wee Weef?" Sam giggled returning to the 'safe' side of the bed and climbing back into it beside his brother who shoved his shoulder into him gently then winced for the movement.

"So… how bad am I?" he asked meeting Jim's earnest eyes.

"You'll be fine in no time… sorta…" Jim started but Sam jumped right in chirping away a laundry list of wounds and traumas that made Dean feel more than a little green after the recitation.

"…and they took out your pendix," Sam finished ticking off the last item on the list.

"You sure I'm gonna be okay?" Dean swallowed hard looking from his little brother to Pastor Jim who once again smiled benevolently, tussled his hair and this time handed him the water cup directly.

"Thanks… how about Sandy? Is she okay? Did they find her too?" he asked, doing whatever it took to push what had happened to him aside and think about the person who he'd been trying to help and hoping that everything he'd suffered hadn't been in vain.

"She's gonna be okay too… she has a tube in her chest too… man broke ribs are bad!... it was gross Dean… the doctor… he… well maybe it was a she, I don't know… took this knife and prwhait!" he made a stabbing gesture and a duck-ish sound, "stuck it right in there… and blood just started running out… I almost threw up… but I think I kinda went to sleep a little… but that's okay cause Sarah was there and she made sure to tell me what was going on all the time… she's pretty nice for a big kid…anyway I bet they had to do the same thing to Sandy since the nurse said it was going to help you breathe and she was breathing up blood too…" he chattered while watching the colors change on his big brothers' face, mesmerized by the pallor and waxy sheen that came back to his cheeks and forehead, "… you're gonna throw up aren't you?" he asked.

Dean shook his head, his lips pressed tight as he leaned back and closed his eyes.

Jim chuckled and dug out his wallet, "Hey Sam… why don't you run to that cart in the hallway and get us something to drink okay?" he handed the boy a ten.

"Coffee? Cream and sugar right?" Sam asked.

"You got it…"

"Can I get Dean something?" he asked peering closely at his brother, "He might want something after he pukes."

"I'm not gonna puke runt…just get me a soda," Dean groaned.

Sam looked askance at Jim who nodded and reached for a pink plastic tub on the bed table.

"Yes you are…" Sam nodded knowingly and dashed out of the room.

"Yes I am…" Dean leaned over clutching at the tub secure in Jim's gentle embrace, comforted by the warmth and love from two of these very important people in his life. Everything would've been just perfect if only the hunt for the ogre was over and his dad was already back safely.

--

Sound was the first thing that came back to John, an odd clicking sound, various snaps and cracks and noises that were familiar but he just couldn't place. The next thing that slid into his senses was the fragrance of fire. Somewhere off to the side of his brain he was certain he heard a woman's voice scolding someone, but he couldn't be quite sure.

His head rang or was someone sharpening something? Sounds like the machete on the grinder…is Dean sharpening the blades?... what day is it? he wondered and wandered through a black haze of sensory wool before the world snapped to and he remembered everything. Especially Junior's back fences swing with the tree branch that put him down for just how long, he didn't know. Long enough to get myself into a heap of trouble here… some hunter you are Johnny boy… getting yourself caught by ogre jr. and double ugly over there… lemme guess momma's around here somewhere too…okay… just don't give the game away…he kept his breathing shallow and let his head bob down again, pulled by gravity while he slowly worked the knife from his wrist sheath down to his fingertips so he could start working on those bindings.

-  
tbc.

I know its not up to my usual standard this time... but I'm trying... Please forgive.

Please R&R Thanks. Sifi.


	12. Chapter 12

Their Own Devices – chpt 12. by: sifi. 

--

John felt his lips twist in a maniac's grin as he straightened himself up, the howl of agonized and impotent fury feeding his mania as he set to again. His greatest force applied on the down stroke as he sawed his recovered bowie knife through the cartilage, vertebrae, and spinal cord of Ugly Jr. beneath him. The light that leeched from the young ogre's eyes seemed transmuted into his filling them with violent, penetrative, brackish malice. A primitive sound tore through him as the head came free of the body, the jagged leaflets of the neck skin charring upward while its blood drained out in black satiny threads that made him think of burnt oil.

He looked across the small opening, watching the half of Mother Ugly's face that was left after its encounter with his blade, torque in a corkscrew of maternal horror. Her wail of anguish keened knifelike through the air, silencing the world around them, not a leaf dared to flutter in the wake of her despair as the human her husband had dared to cross pulled with a strength no mere man should have. He tore the remaining skin of her son's neck, completely severing his beloved countenance from the rest of his body, the weight of his skull and brain stretching the connective tissue to a glossy finish that made her wish and hope however fleetingly that what she'd just seen wasn't real. Yet she knew it was, just as she knew as he dropped her son's decapitated head heartlessly and rose to his feet, his eyes fixed on the one of hers that still remained within her head, it was her turn. Her husband had brought this down on them, he'd chosen the wrong human to torment, his bad habit of playing with his food had finally gotten them all killed and for the first time since she'd married him, she hated him.

Covering half the distance to Mother Ugly in two strides John felt exhilarated, his heart dark and dangerous. Movement to his left caught his attention and he peered coldly at the struggling Harris ogre dragging its bleeding and half burnt away body toward him, its mouth promising horrible cruelty with the hatred that twisted it. It didn't waste its energy on words, the look was enough as recognition passed between them.

As if bored, and in slow motion in his own head John lifted his left hand and squeezed the trigger lazily, he wasn't aiming, he didn't care where he hit the ogre but he did smile as three new blow holes appeared in its body, along with jet black spray. It stopped crawling, face to the ground and lay gasping, watching helplessly as John closed the distance to its wife, straddled her back, knelt down, grasped her hair, lifted her head, and numb to screaming agony in his right shoulder from the broken bones in there, sliced cleanly through her throat, all the way down to the vertebrae, merciful and quick, finally. Her black blood ran rivers on the ground while her flesh began its slow incineration.

John sat upon her back, gasping, breathing hard and looking at the creature before him, its mouth open, its croaking protestations pitiful to his one good ear, his body felt the vibration on his right side, it was like being inside a speaker box.

Sitting atop its wife, their eyes met squarely. He took a moment to catch his breath and decide exactly how he was going to kill this creature that dared to hurt his boy and that helpless little changeling girl he'd almost forgotten about. He knew the lore, a human child traded for one of another species, each child bearing the wounds of the same ill treatment, if one should be mistreated. Somewhere out there, he knew, was an ogre child that had been suffering along with Sandy Harris, and quite possibly at the hands of a human, …_Mine is not to reason why… it's to kill this sadistic son of a bitch that HURT MY BOY!_

He scrubbed the black spray on his face, rubbing it in, or rubbing it away, he didn't know, and he didn't care. He rose to his feet, his dark eyes flint-hard and ice cold, half of his mouth turned up in a sneer, his myriad wounds, bruises, and breaks beyond notice as he stood before the fallen creature, just out of arms reach. He looked to the blade in his right hand, then the gun in his left, and back to the ogre feeling the sneer grow into a chilling smile that would eventually become well known among the evils out there. John Winchester locked his soul into a box and cast that smile on his prey with a cock of his head and whispered, "Payback…"

--

"…please!..." Dean barked with tears running down his face, he couldn't take it anymore, the itching was horrible and even though he'd looked, he'd swear there was a lit match in there somewhere.

"I'm sorry young man… You're in no shape to be walking anywhere… you're going to have to bear with it until the doctor decides you can walk on your own…" the nurse tried to explain, she had kids this age and the courage this one had displayed in the face of the tortures he and that little girl had endured made her want to rush home and hold her own children to her, maybe even lock them up till they were thirty or the world became a safe place. It also gave her hope for the future. "It shouldn't hurt, we used a very small gauge…I can give you some numbing jelly but I can't…" her brows furrowed as his hands went under the blanket and tried to find the end of the sinister device. "Don't you dare young man… don't make me get the doctor to order you to be restrained again…"

But her threat came just a moment too late, a flick of his hand beneath the covers, a barking howl and piercing lace of pain drained the color from her face as she gasped, threw back his sheets with one hand and slid the other down the length of the tubing until she found the lock that kept the balloon inflated inside his bladder, and released it.

The catheter slid out of the boy and he shuddered his pain, biting his bottom lip bloody while fresh tears of relief poured down his cheeks.

"Deeeeaaaaan! What are you doing to him!" he heard Sam call from down the hall. In the periphery of his vision he saw his little brother jerk himself out of Pastor Jim's grip and race blindly to him.

He screeched to a halt before the nurse, one fist raised while the other pointed behind him at Jim, "What'd you do to him you big meanie? You be nice to my brother or he's…" motioning to the pastor, "…gonna bring down God on you!"

"S'okay Sam…" Dean grunted with a tiny pained smile, he was breathing hard and his lip was bleeding Sam noticed. He watched his big brother sink pale, and shaking and agonized against the pillows behind him. He raced around to the side of the bed, climbed up and pressed his palms to Dean's face, his blue-green eyes watery, huge and searching for comfort in his brother's countenance once more.

"What'd she do to you Dean? What's wrong? Are you okay? Are you hel…I mean delirious again? Cause there's no rats here… it's okay, I swear… I won't leave you again okay? Just be okay…" Sam assured, feeling guilty as hell that he'd left his brother's side and something had made him scream like that. It was the same sound he'd heard while the ogre was swinging the gun box around with Dean and the rats inside of it, and it made Sam's skin crawl. If he could help it, he'd make sure Dean NEVER made a sound like that again!

"M'okay Sammy…" Dean sighed, his left hand motioning Sam to lay next to him, while his right one tried to get rid of that lit match feeling down there.

"What happened?" Jim asked disturbed by the tears and renewed exhausted pallor on his young charge's face.

"He said the catheter was hurting him and he started to pull it out while the balloon was still inflated…" she explained.

Jim sucked wind grimacing at the idea. He'd seen how big those balloons got, it could tear someone up.

"Yeah…" she winced, "… he may wind up with some blood in his urine, light pink-ish, if it's anything more, let one of the nurses know immediately okay?" she urged softly as Jim nodded, "I'll be back with a hand held urinal for him… he's a very obstinate young man…" she smiled wryly.

"That's probably why he's alive right now," Jim nodded solemnly. The things that had been done to Dean he didn't know, but the damage alone, the tally of it hurt his heart for the boy. He was going to have a long road to get back to healthy, but if Jim was sure of one thing, he was certain that Dean would heal quickly with his little brother at his side. Sam would see to it.

Jim looked over his shoulder at the boys and felt his spine turn to ice for an instant. The sight of Dean's pale tear stained face so deathly still against those pillows, his arm over his little brother's shoulders while Sammy lay against him, his hand, more gentle than an average eight year olds brushing back Dean's grimy hair and wiping the sweat from his face. _God help me, I don't think this is the last time I'll see these boys like this… please God… let me be wrong… and where the hell is John? Look after that bull headed fool! His boys need him…_

--

The toe of his boot slid beneath the ogre's shoulder, with a single simple motion he rolled the creature onto its back. It's jagged, splintered breathing loud enough to mask the tell tale signs of his own exertion and currently, unfelt injuries. He looked down into what was left of that mangled face, flesh torn down to the bone in some places, through the muscle in others. He acknowledged that there was a gaping hole in its cheek that should not be there, and that what he was seeing on the other side of that hole was the creature's teeth, the few that now remained in its jaw bone. Several lay on the ground, splintered, broken or glistening with heavy mucosal saliva or greenish black ogre blood. There was no way the creature would survive its wounds. There was no way it could manage to recover to wreak any kind of vengeance on any of the Winchesters, or any other human for that matter. With the destruction it had been dealt, seared pieces of meat with boiling, charring edges strewn pell mell about the small clearing among them, it was a wonder its body remembered what living was.

It's frighteningly intact eyes gazed up into the face of a monster. _How?_ it wondered fleetingly while time drew out its last few breaths, _You're just a man…I should have been able to snap you in half…_ but it would find no answers in those dark pitiless eyes that sent shivers down its spine.

The ogre's boogeyman knelt beside its head, the blade of its knife, the stamp that read "Stainless Steel" turned, easy to see, the implication unmistakable. The creature that used to call itself Harris, and once masqueraded as a man swallowed, a reflexive action that no longer made any difference, nor caused any actual motion aside from a glimpsed flick of the tongue within that hole, the smooth muscle tubes it was trying to work lay to the side of its rib cage. The creature from it's own nightmares moved the blade from before its eyes. Closing its eyes, it prepared for torturous blows, slices, saws and cuts. It waited, then, when it could no longer stand the waiting, opened its eyes and its blood froze. If it's body hadn't been so accustomed to living, the sight of the smile hovering above might have been enough to kill it.

It watched, its eyes following the human's left hand as it drew a black .9mm semi-automatic pistol and pressed the barrel to its right eye. _Thank Heaven for small mercies…_ Harris thought and with the vibration of a click, it thought nothing more.

--

tbc sorry so torturously short but… needed to start 13… y'know…

Please R&R,

I need to know if it was cold enough

sifi


	13. Chapter 13

Their Own Devices – chpt 13.  
by: sifi. 

--

When the last of the search party and 'official' vehicles pulled out of the darkened lot at the end of All Season's Road John resurrected himself from his shallow, restful grave of underbrush. He'd slept in fits and spurts praying he hadn't erupted any kind of riotous snore, the kind that Mary always teased him gently about. He noticed that when he was on the hunt the Marine in him neatly packaged the man away until the job was done. Once the evil was gone, the mission accomplished he could comfortably pull his 'mere mortal' suit on over the soldier he wore 24/7.

Slow moving floes of roiling images inched forward, eating up the landscape of his humanity. Today he'd been a monster. There was no evidence at all that Mother Ugly and Jr. had laid so much as a breath on his boy, but they'd tormented that poor girl, or at the very least stood by while it happened. He'd seen the transcription of the report his son made to the school principal, he'd seen reports from a few others who'd never followed up for one reason or another. Sheriff Ozeman had been so darned impressed with Dean and Sam "Stuart" that when he had the chance to meet their father, "…a widowed long haul jockey who'd instilled so much independence and community responsibility into his children…" he'd latched onto him like a burr. Still it served John's needs.

He saw the reports from the trauma room, every rat bite, bruise, scratch, blister, break, and hair out of place practically cataloged, itemized and tagged, marked and charted on multi-view drawings of human anatomy. Every procedure, from the quantity of Ketamine used to anesthetize him while they put the chest tube into his broken little body, to the sedatives they'd poured into him when the fever took hold and his fingers ripped through the bandages, digging into the bite holes, trying to find the vermin he was certain had taken up residency within him, and everything in between scrolled through his mind. He'd been on the operating table for three hours after they removed his appendix, while they cleaned the intestinal seepage out of his abdominal cavity. The surgeon's operative report was certain of one thing, that despite the generally routine nature of the operation itself, given his other injuries they weren't certain he'd survive such a simple procedure. They'd chanced the operation, hoping to get in under the wire, before possible infection from the bites set in, and in this instance it had been the right call.

Salty water ran out of his eyes and down his face, dripping through his t-shirt and his body trembled as he pounded the steering wheel of his faithful impala, his flooding eyes barely able to see the word 'Emergency' on the giant red sign in front of his parking space. _My son…_

With the heat of adrenaline gone from him, and hatred on a momentary sabbatical, pain came back to him demanding attention. _All in good time… I need to see my boys…I need to see Dean… I need to know if he hates me… please God don't let him hate me…_ he pushed the door open with his good left arm the familiar 'squee' and buckle sounding so much like home. Memories came to him as they often did while he was in this car he couldn't get rid of and yet could barely stand to keep. Those moment were of Mary, when they'd first started dating, when they got "stranded" on the side of the road during a blizzard and decided they needed to make love to stay warm, the race to the hospital while she was in labor with Dean and Sam both, but they were also memories of driving away from the ruin of their lives that horrible night, it all just hurt so much.

Orderlies and housekeeping staff walked on the other side of the hall when they saw John approach, their eyes dropping to the floor, they hurried on their way. John started to wonder at it but the ground shifted, he lurched to the wall and let it guide him to the floor. In seconds he was surrounded by people in pajamas and not quite sure what happened.

Someone came quickly forward with a wheelchair while another someone, a very pretty someone crouched before him and stabbed him through the eyes with a light.

_Warm… soft…_ he thought disjointedly when his hand connected with hers, batting that stinging light saber out of his eyes. _Pretty girl… mouth moving… pretty mouth… could kiss that mouth but it's not my Mary… mouth moving… talking? Focus… questioning expression… ahhh she's asking me something… sorry sweetheart, can't hear out of that ear… an ogre made me deaf there… like son like father huh? he he he …_ he felt his lips smile just before he took flight and landed soft and upright thanks to a multitude of hands that picked him up off the floor and set him into the chair.

_Ooh… looks like I'm goin' for a ride… take me to my boys! Don't worry boys… Daddy's home! Don't hate me Dean…I love you too much for you to hate me… please…_he felt tears falling again and laid his face into his hands, barking for the coarse grinding wrenching at his right shoulder.

--

"Pastor Jim?" one of the duty nurses whispered over the heads of the sleeping boys. She motioned him into the hallway.

"What is it?" he asked softly after joining her outside Dean's room.

"It's Mr. Stuart… He's been injured…"

Jim rocked on his heels turning his head to look at the boys he loved as if they were his own, _Please God…they need their father..._ "How bad is it?" he asked.

"He'll be okay, he's down in the ER right now… they're going to do some tests but he's combative…I thought since you're the family pastor you could talk to him… Dr. Reynolds isn't going to hold off on sedating him for long but he did say he'd give you a chance to talk to him… special circumstances and all…"

Jim nodded and looked back at the boys sleeping so peacefully, Sammy curled protectively around his brother, Dean's arm wrapped loosely around him in return, his head lolling to the side, cheek resting on Sam's long dark waves. He didn't have the heart to disturb them. _Sammy'll stand watch…he's a little lion that one… I don't think I've ever seen him like this before… course… they've never been through anything like this before either._

--

"…me to my BOYS! NOW!" John roared trying unsuccessfully to push himself to his feet. Whatever was wrong with his right shoulder, and from what Jim could see through the doorway, exhaustion and other wounds was keeping him down, and it had him furious.

Jim entered the room and motioned the doctor and nurse out, _Sometimes being a man of God is a true blessing!_ he thought closing the door so it was just him and John.

"Jim! How is he? How's Dean?" John settled immediately, his expression an open plea.

Jim nodded and sat in front of the frightening looking hunter, "He's going to be fine… he's got Sammy standing guard over him… nothing's gonna get to that boy," he assured and watched relief drive out some of the anxiety in his face.

"I have to see him…" he tried to push himself up again and barked in pain.

"John have you seen yourself? You look like hell… you'll scare the crap out of both of those boys if you don't get cleaned up first…" he smiled and rose to the sink where he wet some paper towels and handed them to his friend.

"That good huh?" John asked starting with his face.

Jim nodded, "The boys are sleeping… they're fine… did you get the job done?" he asked, his voice dropping a couple of notches.

John nodded solemnly and that hunter's blankness glanced through his eyes, "Done and done… that poor kid's going to wind up in social services or something…"

"I'll see what I can do," Jim smiled.

"Tell me…" John choked, his hand snaking out and grasping the pastor by the wrist, dark eyes searching those that still held hope deep within them, "Tell me my boy doesn't hate me Jim…"

"What?!" Jim ground appalled by the very thought, "John what would make you think such a thing?"

John shook his head, the tears wanting to come again. He didn't care if Jim saw him cry, it was a natural thing and if anyone could understand the need for tearful release it was this man who'd become not just his friend, but virtually his own conscience.

"I wasn't there…I was on a hunt… if I'd just been there maybe… maybe Dean wouldn't have had to go through all that… maybe I would have found him sooner or been able to stop that son of a bitch before he drop kicked him over Sammy's head… my boys Jim… that son of a bitch could have killed both of my boys! and what was Sammy thinking? Going there by himself? Why didn't he call someone? Why didn't he call you!... They're all I have!" John broke, planting his face into his palms he sobbed, all too certain of just how close he came to losing what kept him a man, what kept him alive. "I hate this life Jim… I hate this life for them… they deserve so much more…" he sniffed.

"I know John… they do… but no matter what else, you three have each other, you give those boys everything they need every day of their lives, you give them a direction, a moral compass, you give them survival skills and all the love they can take…no matter where you go, no matter what you do… you're still a family… you're just… non-traditional…"

"I can't let these things do what they do without a fight Jim… someone has to take a stand against them… and I'll be damned if I'm going to let my boys walk through this world blind to what's out there! I won't leave them vulnerable like that!" he insisted and pushed himself to his feet with his good arm, and with Jim's help hobbled to the sink where he saw why he was the one in the trauma room. "Holy crap! I really would scare them looking like this…" he smiled weakly.

"Told ya," Jim smiled helping him sit back down.

"John… the boys are sleeping, do the tests the doctors want you to, let them do what they have to so you don't put those kids through anything else when they see you okay?"

John nodded chewing on his lower lip and squeezed his friend's hand, "…alright."

"I'll go get the doctor then I'm going back up to sit with the boys… we'll see you when you get up there."

--

Dean rubbed his fists into his eyes just before dawn broke over the horizon, he almost felt refreshed and boy was his room crowded! Sammy was curled around him, dead to the world as he slid out from under his little brother's protective arm. He smiled reaching slowly for the hand held urinal the nurse had brought yesterday and glancing around furtively let his bladder empty, relieved that there was no pink to be seen and the burning had lessened considerably. He capped the plastic container and set it on the floor then looked over to his left grinning.

Pastor Jim was stretched out in a reclining chair, and stretched between a wheelchair and a regular chair was John, his head lolling forward, chin to chest. _Wow! Dad got beat up big time!_ he thought eyeing the nearly black bruises from his eye to his cheek, _Oooh he's got a broken nose too… ouch… what happened to his shoulder? Did he win? Yeah… he won… he wouldn't be back yet if he didn't… he'd still be chasing the bastard down_. Dean thought and pushed himself upright.

As if on cue John's head bobbed and he opened his eyes, looking into his first born sons' smiling face.

"Hey dude…" he whispered feeling the stiffness under his own wounds.

"Hey dad…" Dean felt himself grin, "…so… you took a few lumps yourself huh?"

John smiled wincing and nodded feeling his eyes glass over again as he pushed himself to his feet and moved to Dean's right side. He wanted a moment alone with his eldest even if there were two other people in the room with them.

He sat gingerly on the bed careful of the machinery, tubes and wires, "How 'ya doin'?" he asked diving into his boy's green eyes and stroking his head tenderly.

"I'm gonna be fine dad…" Dean smiled pressing his face to his father's warm comfortingly calloused palm.

"Booger broke your nose huh?" the smile became a grin.

John nodded, "I swear it's starting to look like I got a potato stuck in the middle of my face…Y'know I used to be a pretty good lookin' guy…" he stroked back his son's hair.

"You look great to me… besides… it gives you character right?"

"Right…" John chuckled gently and felt the film over his eyes grow just a little thicker.

Dean's hand came up and thumbed the tear from his cheek, "It's okay dad… it's okay…" he comforted leaning forward and wrapping his arms around the solid warmth of his father.

--

"…so then what?" Sam asked watching the toe of his big brother's boot scratching at the dirt under the bench.

"So… Pastor Jim helped them find a good home for Sandy, somewhere she'd maybe one day forget about it all…"

"And dad? He didn't get in trouble?"

"Nope, whatever dad did to the bodies, however he got rid of them, they didn't find 'em, and since dad told the Sheriff that Harris jumped him, beat the snot out of him and ran away, I guess that was good enough, I'll tell you… for as much as we've always tried to avoid the cops, that sheriff just thought the world of dad… he probably could've watched him kill Harris and still would've let him go…" Dean mused, his eyes fixed on something beyond the half dozen children running crazy on the playground on the other side of the small blacktop lane.

"Y'know I completely forgot about the rats thing…" Sam sighed, his elbows on his knees as he turned his head and looked at his big brother, yet another facet of him shining through in this moment.

Dean shook his head, "Not me man…" he shuddered smiling softly, "… hate those damned things… I'd rather face down Big Bad again…almost."

"Y'know I don't mind telling you, you amaze me sometimes Dean…" Sam smiled shaking his head.

"Yep… I am pretty amazing… genius and looks in one almost too awesome to bear package… yeah man… I rock…" he sniffed cockily and burst out laughing at the snicker Sam held back.

"Come on… I'm serious here…y'know you may not think it's smart to connect with people, and you don't let anyone know you do it, but you… you've got a good heart man…"

He watched his older brother carefully and grinned when his hand came up behind his head messing up his hair with a good natured shove, "Thanks…"

"You ready?"

"Yep…" Dean nodded and rose in time with his brother. Together they crossed the cemetery and stood before the simple quartz grave marker. Dean knelt and laid the little bundle of daisies at the base and read the words, "Sandra Whitaker, beloved Wife and Mother, in God's arms 10-2006… 'She lived in service to others May she rest in peace'"

Dean placed a stone atop the marker and stood straight, "Rest in Peace Sandy."

"Hey… for once it wasn't something supernatural…" Sam said softly.

"Doesn't make it any easier to lose a good person Sammy," Dean nodded blinking hard as they returned to the Impala.

"I know…" Sam dropped a reassuring hand onto his shoulder and squeezed, "I know."

--

end.

Please don't hate me… but please do R&R

sifi.


End file.
